This one? 58 wins. 5th place in offensive rating. 6th in defensive rating. Beat the Nuggets and Kings to get to the Western Conference Finals. Lost 4-2 to the Lakers team with Shaq, Kobe, Payton and Malone. The T'Wolves website has been writing a series on the 2003-04 Wolves because it's been 10 years. http://www.nba.com/timberwolves/news/flashback-10-years-ago-today-wolves-top-kings-game-7-0 For all the crap McHale got, and he did make some mistakes (Joe Smith contract punishment, he did put together the only decent teams in the Timberwolves' history. He drafted Kevin Garnett, the first player to be drafted out of high school in 20 years. He also got Kevin Love in a draft day trade for OJ Mayo. Has any of genius Morey's team been as good as the 03-04 Wolves?
Put Morey in McHale's shoes on that team. Does Morey do better or worse than McHale did? Put McHale in Morey's shoes during Morey's tenure. Does the Rockets team come out better with McHale than with Morey?
Well this is hypothetical. But to answer the question at hand the answer is NO. Morey has made some nice moves and some good picks, but has yet to make a complete team. Hoping the time is coming soon.
I think both Morey and McHale faced challenges. Morey had the two stars physically break down before age 30. I agree that the 08-09 team was very talented with the addition of Artest and good role players in Scola, Landry, Battier and even future star Lowry. But they came as McGrady was lost in the middle of the season and Yao at the end. After that, it wasn't easy rebuilding without tanking and with Yao/McGrady's contracts still on the book. He's taken some big steps but still need more. One of McHale's big challenge is that his team was located in Minnesota, and it's hard getting people to sign there, or even to stay there (if only Marbury stayed and fulfilled his potential). I don't know that he's made more mistakes than the average GM, but being in Minnesota makes it hard to recover from your mistakes, too.
You look the only possible achievement of McHale's tenure in Minnesota as a measuring stick? He screwed the franchise out of their future(with the Joe Smith fiasco), made incompetent and irrelevant move one after another. He made horrible trades, this team was anomaly of his entire tenure as a GM. He was a horrible, horrible GM. He wasn't as bad as his successor(David Kahn), but to answer your question Morey has not building a WCF contender. Given the same leverage, I'd take Morey everyday of the week over McHale in regards to dealing, constructing, and managing his leverage. McHale's a dumb****. You guys need to understand this.
Minnesota wouldn't even have had a future to screw up if not for Kevin McHale taking a chance on a high school kid and help developed him in the first place.
it's known glen taylor meddles too much with front office decisions. near the end mchale's tenure as gm. he had a rep for being taylor's yes man because of the trades he agreed to.
Has any playoff team in history had to pick up a D-League player just to fill out an eight man rotation for the playoffs? Fifteen men on the roster, not twelve. We did it without injury!! (Well, Greg Smith got injured early in the year.) Morey puts together pretty good half-teams. But he spends most of his time taking them apart. Analytics without analysis. What I meant to say is, I vote for that Timberwolf team.
In his entire tenure, McHale has been Moreys yes man as well as all the players too. That's why he's incompetent, he can't do his own damn job. He blindly follows Morey(for good and bad), and schmoozes the players. He's not really much of anything but a figure head.
Morey has never had or acquired anyone as good as a prime KG. KG in his prime consistently led his team in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, and along with being the emotional leader of that team.
That was a dope team Too bad cassell was hurt in the west conference finals, he was a laker killer that year. Sam cassell is a billion times better than Lin. Sprewell is what James harden needs to be.
Sam Cassell destroys Mike Bibby <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SiAy7lzwR1s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
