After his team completed its first 60-loss season since he accepted the job 13 years ago, Timberwolves vice president of basketball operations Kevin McHale on Thursday said he is committed to his job; returning to the playoffs and headed toward a championship, a development he claimed is not as far away as you might think.
McHale said he thinks the Wolves -- a team that won five of its first 39 games after being completely remade after last summer's Kevin Garnett trade -- can follow their 22-60 season by winning as many as 20 more games next season in a league that he says has few great teams. That is, if the Wolves stay healthy. Guard Randy Foye missed this season's first three months, an absence McHale deemed significant in his team's slow start. That leap would make them a .500 team.
"I think we should next year," he said. "I don't think we're that far away, to be truthful. I think we can be a lot more competitive. I do like our young guys, our core group moving forward. I think there's really people here to build around."
Wolves coach Randy Wittman's response? Well, wait just a minute here.
"Let's see who we move forward with," Wittman said, referring to a summer in which five Timberwolves will become restricted free agents. "We'll have a better understanding then. I always find it hard to correlate; how do you put a number on it? We've got to be better. I think we will be better.
"How many teams in the course of history have made 20-game jumps? If it was easy, a lot more teams would be doing it. That's a lot of games. I'm not saying we can't do it. But let's see what our team is, what kind of draft pick we get, who we're able to re-sign and who we might be able to sign."
The Wolves have the option to match any contract offers Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Craig Smith, Kirk Snyder and Chris Richard receive this summer, and McHale said he has already prioritized that list because it's unlikely the team will be able to re-sign all five.
He called Gomes "definitely a guy we'd like to bring back." When asked specifically if he'd extend qualifying offers -- a procedure that keeps the team's right to match -- to Telfair and Snyder by June 30, McHale said he'd wait to see who and how the team drafts on June 26.
SEASON HIGHLIGHT: Two home victories over Phoenix P.S. (Pre-Shaq O'Neal), including one in January that was the second victory in a stretch when the Wolves won five of seven games after they started the season 5-34. Those transforming games included a victory at Golden State and home victories over the Suns, New Jersey, Chicago and the Los Angeles Clippers.
TURNING POINT: July 31, 2007. The date of the Kevin Garnett trade, when the Wolves traded their last three seasons of mediocrity for a big step backward that evoked the team's early expansion days. The Wolves lost 60 games (22-60) for the first time since Garnett was drafted in 1995. Until then, the Wolves had lost 60 or more games in five of their first six seasons.
