Randy Wittman is coaching for his job and he knows it. After coaching the Wolves to a 22-60 record last season, the team is 4-15 this fall, having lost five straight and seven of the last 10 games. As bad (perhaps worse), the Wolves last two losses have been by scores of 113-84 and 107-84.
Wittman was asked by Sports Headliners on Saturday afternoon if his termination is imminent. “You know what, I don’t know,” he said. “Obviously if we don’t win, those kinds of things happen. I mean it’s already happened three times in our league already. …”
Coaching changes in the NBA occur, even early in the season, as P.J. Carlesimo in Oklahoma City, Eddie Jordan in Washington and Sam Mitchell in Toronto learned this fall. Media and fans have asked for Wittman’s dismissal.
Wittman, a likeable guy and effective with media relations, said he’s accepting of the local criticism. “That’s our business and I know that better than anybody,” he said. “We’re here to win games. We’re struggling right now so that kind of talk is always going to come up.
“I don’t worry myself with that. I really don’t because there aren’t very many Jerry Sloans (Utah coach) that stay around for 21 years in the NBA left, and so all I can do is make sure our team is prepared every night. That we’re doing our job as coaches to make them prepared and have an opportunity to win games in the fourth quarter. For the most part we’ve done that. …”
Kevin McHale, the team’s vice president of basketball operations, was on the team’s three game road trip that concluded Friday. When asked, Wittman speculated that McHale made the trip to evaluate the coaching and the players.
Wittman said the Wolves, who collectively looked discouraged and shaken after Saturday night’s loss to a Clippers team that had a 3-16 record, need to regain confidence. “Losing those games early in the season that we had won hurt our team’s confidence,” he said. “Now it’s my job to try to get that confidence back to these guys. That’s where we’re struggling a little bit. I think that really put us behind the eight ball. If we could have won three or four of those games that we had won, that we let get away early in the season, we wouldn’t be talking about this right now. “
The Wolves decision makers need to take a serious look at themselves before doing anything about Wittman who has played and coached in the NBA for most of the last three decades. The team’s personnel fits about as well as a jigsaw puzzle missing a few pieces.
It was suggested that the Wolves are still without quality players at two of basketball’s most important positions, point guard and center, although the search has been on for years. “Those are the things that we have to look at as an organization,” Wittman said. “As a coach I’ve got to coach who I’ve got. That’s all I can do. Obviously, I think there are some things that we have to look at and try to get to help complement this team with the players that we have, and we’re not there yet. …”