The Wolves hired Kurt Rambis earlier this month to be the team's head coach. Rambis had some drama in Sacramento as a finalist for the job which went to Paul Westphal; Rambis said some snarky things about the franchise and insinuated his wife didn't want to live in Sacramento. Enjoy the winter, Mme Rambis!
Now we learn that Rambis has hired two assistant coaches to join he and former Boston exec/assistant coach Dave Wohl. One of those assistants, Bill Laimbeer, has little sympathy locally, mostly due to the fact our city's only daily newspaper's only basketball columnist has repeatedly tried to push Laimbeer's coaching career down the collective throats of her readership and, allegedly, the team's ownership. Also, anyone who is a Monarchs fan probably didn't enjoy the Laimbeer era for the Detroit Shock. As a head coach, Laimbeer was obnoxious and inflammatory when it came to other teams' players.
The other new Wolves assistant -- one Mr. Reggie Theus -- will get a different brand of vitriol locally. There was the Kevin Martin saga -- when, as a way to endear himself to Ron Artest, I guess, Theus implied Martin wasn't an able player, that Artest was better and necessary. And then Theus, instead of saying it came out wrong or simply explaining what he meant, accused everyone who objected of being stupid about basketball (including Martin's agent at the time -- Jason Levien), used Grant Napear's radio show to basically call Sam Amick a liar and surreptiously interrupted Amick's appearance on Jim Crandell's weekend show to, again, call Amick a liar and to imply objectors were stupid.
Reggie calmed down in large part after the Artest trade. He did some good things to start 2008-09, including giving Jason Thompson a chance to start over Mikki Moore fairly early. But he proved to be a not-good coach in the end, and no one in the locker room cried when he got canned. A few months out of the job, he accused bloggers (and one would assume this blogger, considering this was the only substantial Kings blog going during Reggie's reign) of being rural know-nothings who have never understood a thing about the game. Yes, if it weren't for those meddling bloggers, Reggie's stay would have been a rousing success. And also it if weren't for the intrusive media, mutinous players, disenchanted front office and embarrassed ownership group which had gone out on an unstable limb in pushing your hire. If it wasn't for all those jerks, Reggie, you would have been juuuuuust fine.
It is going to be so fun booing the life out of Minnesota's coaching staff this season. Booing the coach is typically reserved for Phil Jackson and perhaps Stan Van Gundy. But ARCO will have a very special welcome for Theus, I assure you that.