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Home | Sports | Timberwolves

Wolves Insider: Mitchell a man with a plan

Ann Heisenfelt, Associated Press - Ap

Raptors coach Sam Mitchell appears professorial on the sideline, but he was a hard-nosed NBA player — from his earliest days with the expansion Timberwolves.

From his earliest days with the Wolves, Raptors coach Sam Mitchell has paid attention to the details.

Star Tribune

Last update: February 5, 2008 - 1:32 AM

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WOLVES WEEK IN REVIEW

Record: 3-1

• A second consecutive winning week? Once 3-21 and on pace to challenge the NBA’s record for futility, the Wolves enter February — and a stretch where they play 10 of 11 games at Target Center — with some steam and Randy Foye finally back on the floor. They were 3-0 at home this week, beating the Nets, Bulls and Clippers.

STAR TRIBUNE’S STAR OF THE WEEK: Al Jefferson, forward

He didn’t get named to the Western Conference All-Star Game, but our big award should soothe his soul. The favorite nearly every week, he averaged 27.8 points and 15.5 rebounds in the Wolves' four games.

THIS WEEK: Two games

Monday: vs. Houston, 7 p.m. Friday: vs. Boston, 7 p.m.

Only two games, which gives Kevin Garnett's emotional return to Minnesota room to breathe, provided he shows. If he can't play because of an abdominal injury, he just might stay home in Boston.

THE QUOTE

"I didn’t realize he was a scorer like that." — Jefferson on Randy Foye’s return last week after missing three months because of a kneecap injury.

JERRY ZGODA

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Sam Mitchell has traveled far from that steamy summer day long ago when he signed a free-agent contract on Timberwolves General Manager Billy McKinney's back inside a little San Antonio gym.

A European-league exile, he unexpectedly survived 13 years in the NBA by his grit and character. On an expansion team loaded with characters, he was something of a renaissance man, able one moment to expound upon that year's beaujolais nouveau wine crop from France, willing to exchange in some playground trash-talk straight from a Hollywood movie script with a teammate the next.

Today, in his suit and spectacles, he stands so professionally, almost professorially, on the sidelines, directing a promising Toronto Raptors team thick with three-point shooters, foreign players and depleting injuries to T.J. Ford and Jorge Garbajosa.

It's a strange sight for anyone who knew him way back when.

Before his Raptors beat the Celtics in Boston last week, somebody asked him if his team would execute well enough to beat the NBA's best team for the first time in four games this season.

"That's what we talked about, whether we see it or not," Mitchell said. "You ask any coach: If they do everything we tell them to do to the letter, no one would ever lose a game. The hardest thing for me to learn about coaching was learning to accept this: When you ask a player, 'Why did you do that when we've been teaching this?' and he says, 'Coach, I don't know why I did that.'

"I couldn't accept that at first. ... And what I realized was, there are times when they just don't know why they did it. That was the hardest thing for me to learn to accept."

Mitchell qualifies his playing career by saying, "As bad a player as I was." But he still never told Wolves coach Bill Musselman that he didn't know why he did something.

"Noooooo," he said. "I told Musselman everything but 'I don't know.' Musselman couldn't have accepted that answer. Larry Brown couldn't have accepted that answer. If you told those guys 'I don't know,' you know what their answer would be: 'I can tell you the next time you're going to be in the game."

His coaching experience began when he played. After trading him to Indiana, the Wolves brought him back in 1995 to mentor a promising draft pick named Kevin Garnett for his first seven NBA seasons.

Now Mitchell, in his fourth year as Raptors coach, faces Garnett four times a year in the Eastern Conference, plus potentially the playoffs.

"He's as deserving of this opportunity as anyone," Mitchell said of the trade that sent Garnett from Minnesota to Boston, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen with the real chance to win a title. "No one plays like he plays. When you see that kind of passion and you make the money he's making and it means nothing when he walks out on the court, you have to pull for him. I tell him I'm pulling for him all but four games a year."

Garnett is scheduled to visit Target Center for the first time since the trade Friday, although an abdominal injury could keep him home. Mitchell will bring his Raptors to town two days later for the first of two games this month against the Wolves. "Are they going to give him a piece of the floor?" Mitchell asked. "Are they going to do anything for him?"

Someone asked Mitchell how he thought the Wolves should acknowledge the return of their former franchise player.

"I'm not going to answer that," Mitchell said. "I have no idea. They should give him the same thing they gave me when I left and came back: 'How ya doing?' I wouldn't expect anything for myself, but somebody who has done what he has done? It'd be nice if they do something to show that for 12 years they appreciate it.

"That would be nice. Do I think Kevin is expecting anything? No. Would he be disappointed if they don't do anything? Probably not."

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