This time, McHale is on the clock

Kevin McHale was 19-12 in his first go-around as head coach of the Timberwolves. AP Steve Aschburner's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Steve. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

MINNEAPOLIS -- One size-16 sneaker down, the other shoe about to drop.

Consider what transpired ever so drearily Monday, on a murky gray afternoon with snowflakes descending, as step No. 1 in what likely will be a Timberwolves Two-Step toward the belated, overdue and possibly too-late shedding of Kevin McHale.

While it's true that Wolves owner Glen Taylor fired head coach Randy Wittman after the team's 4-15 start -- that's what got the headline nationally, anyway -- Taylor also presided over the defrocking of McHale as the club's vice president of basketball operations. Also, the owner made a put-up-or-get-out move by planting the former Boston Celtics' great on the Wolves' sideline for the second time in five seasons.

The first time it happened, back in February 2005, Flip Saunders had been dumped with a 25-26 record (at the end of a 9-16 stretch). That left McHale just 31 games for a playoffs-or-bust run, whipping the defending Western Conference champions to the finish with a roster that still boasted Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell, Latrell Sprewell and Wally Szczerbiak. That crew went 19-12 down the stretch but spit out the bit in late losses at Atlanta and to Seattle, and missed the postseason. McHale retreated to his front office gig, hired Dwane Casey, traded for Ricky Davis, Marko Jaric and Mark Blount and stayed safely above a fray that only got worse.

This time, McHale has 63 games to endure, to navigate the locker room and the league's arenas, to subject himself to twice- or thrice-daily probing from media the once-glib Celtics kidder no longer bothers to entertain. He has four months to improve on the current record and the 38-105 mark Wittman amassed since Casey was dumped at 20-20 in January 2007. Twenty and 20? Relatively speaking, a miniature Casey ought to be bronzed and anchored right next to Red Auerbach on the Coach of the Year trophy.

McHale didn't seem to like coaching very much in his first go-around, although he said Monday that it is the travel, not the games or the practices, that wear on him. Those closer to the team will tell you that McHale doesn't have any problem whatsoever with coaching -- he just prefers to do it without portfolio. Unofficially. Clandestinely even, with no portion of his rump on the line.

That's why one team insider said that he both does and doesn't feel sorry for Wittman. Sure, a likable guy lost a rare and lucrative job, with paychecks that run out in April. But Wittman was coping with McHale's strong advice and ideas, sometimes offered through him, sometimes put directly to the players. "You can't have two voices with players,'' the observer said. "You can't give them an out.''

Now the Wolves will hear one voice. And McHale, from all appearances and portrayals, will get one chance.

Remember, this franchise has been a lot more aggressive through the years firing coaches rather than team executives. The 6-11 guy with the Hall of Fame résumé, the dark circles, the coat-hanger shoulders and the really bad limp is on the clock.

McHale is in the position now of not merely buying the groceries but having to cook the meal. He went to market and came home, time and again, without a true point guard or a workable center. His draft picks have gone from shaky in the late 1990s to non-existent during the Joe Smith sanction years to shaky again. In Rashad McCants, Randy Foye and Corey Brewer, the Wolves have rounded up three consecutive lottery picks, all of whom have faced major knee injuries in their second seasons.

O.J. Mayo, whom the Wolves picked at No. 3 in June, was traded that same night to Memphis for Kevin Love and veteran Mike Miller. Love has been effective lately and Miller had been solid before an ugly ankle sprain last week, but that won't prevent Mayo from becoming, possibly, the second Rookie of the Year traded away by Minnesota in a span of 24 months (Brandon Roy was their pick in 2006, then swapped for Foye.)

Setting aside the first-round picks he threw into past deals like so many fortune cookies -- one with Cassell to the Clippers for Jaric, another in the 2006 Boston trade that delivered Davis, Blount and Marcus Banks -- and the hubris of drafting Ndudi Ebi over Josh Howard in 2003, McHale's latest decisions fuel parlor games of second-guessing among Wolves fans. Consider: Had he picked Danny Granger in 2005 rather than McCants and simply held onto Roy a year later, Minnesota would have had a nucleus of Granger, Roy and Garnett to build around in 2006-07; he might never had needed to trade Garnett! Maybe they would have been too good to land Brewer at No. 7 the following spring. Maybe they would have had to settle for, oh, Al Thornton (No. 14) or Rodney Stuckey (No. 15).

McHale said Monday that he likes the roster he handed to Wittman and now, with a few fingerprints on it, himself. "We have to get 'em playing better,'' he said, "but I like a lot of our players, I like the versatility.'' Given that it was McHale's job to acquire them -- and that three of them came at the cost of the greatest player in franchise history [Garnett] -- what else would we expect him to say?

None of this will matter much if Taylor doesn't keep playing hardball, or at least something more forceful than the footsie he and McHale have played, at various points, in their 13 seasons. Taking McHale's VP authority, reducing him to the "voice of the coach'' in personnel decisions and no longer having his multi-headed staff of Jim Stack, Fred Hoiberg, Rob Babcock and Zarko Durisic report to McHale is a start, however tardy. But if this Wolves club just sort of lies there for the final three-quarters of the season, if McHale can't find the .500 pace that he dumped in a heap of expectations on Wittman as soon as last season ended, and Taylor simply welcomes him back to the front office with a goofy smile, then the team's followers will have been completely betrayed.

Two thoughts: Just in case, they might want to get the heckling out of their system, as long as McHale is providing such a vertical bull's-eye at Target Center. And if Taylor truly is committed to changing this team's culture and fortunes, he might want to back off a little, too. Heavy-handed isn't his style but the billionaire printer and entrepreneur from southwestern Minnesota loves to stay involved in basic basketball decisions.

The last time McHale took over as Wolves coach, he pulled something out of a pocket of his gray plaid suit coat and dropped it on the press table just before tipoff. It was a complete, unused game ticket -- Timberwolves vs. Warriors in Oakland -- from six years earlier, which told us something either about McHale's wardrobe or his dry-cleaning habits.

This time when he takes the sideline, he might find that his ticket, finally, has been punched.

Steve Aschburner covered the Minnesota Timberwolves and the NBA for 13 seasons for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He has served as president or vice president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association since 2005.