David Kahn: Back in the saddle for at least one more season
Ric Bucher reports the Wolves are set to extend David Kahn as POBO for at least one more season. And no, Flip Saunders didn’t turn down the Gophers coaching gig because he’s already secretly agreed to replace Kahn at 600 1st Ave:
Latest on Flip Saunders and Minnesota Timberwolves: source says David Kahn’s position as GM is secure and that the one-year option on his contract, if it has not been exercised already by the TWolves, will be shortly.
via Ric Bucher’s post on Basketball | Latest updates on Sulia.
What does this mean? More below the fold.
There seem to be five possibilities:
- The Wolves don’t expect to be able to re-sign Kevin Love regardless of who’s POBO and like Kahn enough to move ahead with him, post-Love. (Check out Matt Moore’s take on how Kahn’s re-signing might affect Love’s decision here.)
- They either know or believe keeping Kahn around won’t prevent them from retaining Love.
- They value Rubio more than Love and believe Kahn has a better chance than whomever would replace him. Hence, you retain Kahn. #3 is not mutually exclusive with #1.
- A real GM wouldn’t come here unless he were promised he’d have teeth. Get to decide things. Make personnel calls. Rick Adelman & Co. currently have those authorities, it seems. Keeping Rick Adelman thus requires keeping a lame-duck POBO. So you retain Kahn. Problem solved. (Hopefully that would mean that the Wolves have assurance from Adelman that he will indeed return.)
- There is no strategy. Retaining Kahn is the easy thing to do. I mean, who really wants to go through another search like the one that netted Kahn in 2009?
So, which one is it? Did I miss any? Let me know in the Kahnments section.
Punch-Drunk Wolves 
Barf.
Since Taylor is trying to sell the team, it would be very difficult to recruit another GM until the new owner is known. In the meantime it makes the most sense to keep Kahn on a one year deal so the new owner can decide whether to keep him long term or bring in someone new.
Good point. I’m persuaded that Taylor’s trying to sell the team does impact decisions, but I always have a difficult time adjudicating the degree to which it impacts decisions and how that set of calculations interacts with other things that are going on & are big team issues (like some of the ones I mentioned in the post). Complex, this.
It’s very scary to think about Team Adelman leaving in the offseason and Taylor-Moor-Kahn selecting a new head coach. In addition, hints of an imminent sale might make it more difficult to hire a quality coach, should TMK be able to identify one.
Yes it is. I’m not as down on Kahn as most, but it’s still terrifying, given the extreme hit-and-miss nature of most every transaction he’s authored.
What’s the deal with Moor? Does anyone know where he sits within the overall chain-of-command? His name always seems to get floated as if he’s a “guy behind the guy” who wields a big stick behind the scenes because of his relationship to Taylor. But does anyone know 1) how much authority he actually has, and in what areas, and/or 2) the nature of the relationship with Taylor, and whether it’s gotten stronger or weaker over time?
I’m very far out of the loop on what’s actually going on at that pay-grade.