Value of trust: Why Jim Petersen played a special role in the Gersson Rosas hire
As Ethan Casson assembled the team that would ultimately help choose the Timberwolves’ next president of basketball operations, the team’s CEO went to all parts of the organization for representation in a decision they couldn’t afford to get wrong.
His approach was an unconventional one for NBA circles, involving 10 people in the interview process, and not just for the Wolves employees he selected. Maybe the most unique element of all was Casson’s decision to go outside of the organization to bring some much-needed basketball knowledge and schematic expertise to the group.
His pick may have been outside the organization, but it was still inside the house. Fox Sports North analyst Jim Petersen has been a fixture at Target Center for more than two decades, one of the most respected television analysts in the league and a former longtime assistant coach with the Minnesota Lynx.
If anyone across the league looked at Petersen’s inclusion as unorthodox, Casson never doubted it. Few in and around the Timberwolves are more trusted by owner Glen Taylor and Casson than Petersen. Few are more invested in the team’s success than Petersen. Few have been around this organization, and as deeply embedded, for as long as Petersen, who next season will be in his 22nd year broadcasting Wolves games.
“He’s seen more games, he’s called more games as a TV analyst, he’s been a three-time champion coach with the Minnesota Lynx,” Casson said. “He’s played in the NBA. He has relationships with people in the building. He has relationships with people around the league. He has relationships with players past and present. What a huge advantage to have a personality like that sitting in the room.”
Petersen and Casson came into the Wolves organization at the same time, with Casson starting as an entry-level account executive in 1998 while Petersen was getting started in broadcasting. The two have had a good relationship for years, and Petersen’s relationship with Taylor, forged through the Lynx run to three championships while he served under head coach Cheryl Reeve, made him a natural choice in Casson’s eyes.
“I sat knee-to-knee with the owner and he saw me work as an assistant coach winning championships,” Petersen said. “We’ve been to the White House three times together. I’m uniquely qualified to be included in terms of the experience I’ve had with this team wearing so many different hats.”
So Petersen was added to the six-person panel that formally interviewed four candidates, a process that ended with Houston’s Gersson Rosas being chosen over ESPN’s Chauncey Billups, Denver’s Calvin Booth and Brooklyn’s Trajan Langdon. Casson, Petersen, chief people officer Sianneh Mulbah, vice president of basketball development John Thomas, chief revenue officer Ryan Tanke and vice president of social responsibility Jennifer Ridgeway made up the primary selection team. Reeve, GM Scott Layden and interim coach Ryan Saunders also spent time with the candidates as part of the process before Taylor had his own conversations with each.
The goal was to get a plethora of experiences and backgrounds, and Casson believed Petersen filled an important niche for the group.
“If it’s just Jim Petersen, you can think and feel how you want to think,” Casson said. “But there were nine different representatives and leaders, all charged with something very different from one another, all from different stages of their lives, all from different places of the world. Then they got to talk to the owner the day after and ask extra questions.”
One of the biggest areas of struggle over the years for Taylor in running the Timberwolves has been finding the right person to run the basketball side of the operations. His experiences going outside of his sphere to hire have not been ideal, with David Kahn completely overmatched in that position and Tom Thibodeau not what Taylor was looking for from a personality component. So when he decided to go looking again, Taylor placed trust at a premium. Casson, Petersen and Reeve are all part of his inner circle.
“It’s a process that I used in my other businesses and have been successful doing that,” Taylor said. “I want to get as many people involved that I know and I trust. Ethan and I have worked together for a long time and have a great relationship. So, I brought in not only Ethan but many of our staff in this process.
“This process also gave Gersson a chance to meet our staff and see the culture that we have. I just have found that has worked in the past with other businesses so there was no reason it wouldn’t work in this case and it did.”
Despite 14 years of experience in the Timberwolves organization, the last three as CEO, Casson has spent all of his time on the business side of the franchise. Conversations about style of play, salary cap issues and roster management are not in his wheelhouse, so he brought in Petersen and Thomas, two former NBA players, to help in that regard.
“What I notice with Jim, he sees so much basketball, he has a macro view of what works and doesn’t work,” Reeve said. “He watches so much basketball when you’re doing TV. Add to that with Jim that he coached. And then Jim played in the league for so long, he’s so connected that he’s got so many people that trust him and there’s mutual admiration for what he does and you can collect information. I think it was smart on Ethan’s part.”
There is precedent for analysts to hold influence within organizations, if not fully participate in the decision-making process as Petersen did. Dominique Wilkins is vice president of basketball and a special adviser to Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin, making him an adviser to the senior management team on basketball-related issues while also doubling as the team’s color analyst. Utah Jazz radio play-by-play announcer David Locke is connected within his organization and Lakers legend Chick Hearn held enormous sway with the organization during his long run calling games in Los Angeles. Hot Rod Hundley back in the day in Utah, Quinn Buckner currently in Indiana, the list goes on for analysts who hold respect with ownership or front offices.
Add to it that Petersen is an incredibly popular figure with the Wolves fan base, and they had little concern for pushback about his inclusion.
“I wasn’t concerned what people would think within the Timberwolves family,” Petersen said. “I think there would be a general sense that there would be positive feedback in terms of our fan base. They know me. I’m a known quantity in how I think about the game and how I think about our team and generally people understand I’m pretty honest in how I go about my job as a broadcaster. People trust me because they feel like I’m being honest, and I am.”
Petersen’s following has grown thanks in large part to his unwillingness to retreat into the homer stereotype that plagues many local broadcasts. He never rips the home team, though he has been given ample reason to over the years. But he doesn’t sugarcoat things, either. His honest assessment of what happens on the court endears him to fans who understand that he is not insulting their intelligence. It has also been known to rankle some team executives and agents who watch the telecasts.
Taylor and most in decision-making positions in the organization and Fox Sports North have understood that Petersen’s forthright approach has been a strength that has resonated with the fan base.
“Our organization has never told me what to say and how to say it,” Petersen said. “There’s a reason for a lot of credit I have with my bosses at FSN and with the team.”
With a team that has struggled as mightily as the Wolves have for most of the last 15 years, polishing the apple wouldn’t sit well with a frayed public. As the years went on, and especially as things fell off the rails this season, fans found refuge in Petersen’s approach. There was a particularly telling exchange with play-by-play man Dave Benz on Halloween night against the Utah Jazz, which was the birthday of the “General Soreness” meme that only added to the absurdity of Jimmy Butler’s stalemate with the Timberwolves.
Click here to learn how to add YouTube Videos to your phpBB forum
During a Wolves loss to Toronto in October, Petersen rightly pointed out that Karl-Anthony Towns didn’t appear to have his head in the game, a comment that Towns’ own father agreed with.
Make no mistake. Petersen’s honest approach to the job doesn’t change where his allegiances lie. He is just as willing to heap praise on Saunders for his willingness to experiment with lineups or laud Towns when he has it rolling. He views himself as the voice for the fans, in good times and in bad.
“When Ethan asked me, I felt like I was honored, for sure,” Petersen said. “But then I also want to help get this right because at the end of the day, I want to see this team win. I want what’s best for Mr. Taylor. I want what’s best for the organization and really I want what’s best for our fan base. I feel like I was almost a representative for the fans. I hear everyone talking and I know how frustrating it was for our fan base. Part of me was really happy to be there for our fans.”
Petersen spent the first four seasons of his eight-year playing career in Houston, background that was particularly useful when it came to due diligence on Rosas. Carroll Dawson, an assistant coach during Petersen’s playing days, was the general manager when Rosas was brought on board. So there was common ground with which to work.
Petersen teamed with Casson and Mulbah in the subcommittee dedicated to talking to candidates about their visions and strategies for the basketball component, their ideas for the draft and free agency this summer and the long-term expectations for the on-court product.
“He played the game at a high level and so both he and John Thomas were able to look through the lens of would I relate to this guy as a player? Would I respect and run through a wall for him?” Tanke said. “So they were looking at it through a player prism. Those who have watched our broadcast through the last decade or so, he dives so deep into analytics and I don’t think he gets enough credit around, if you follow him on Twitter or watch our broadcast, he’s been embracing the analytical side of the game for years.”
Petersen, of course, travels with the team, giving him an up-close view of the dynamics that were working and were not working under Thibodeau’s leadership. He talks to players, converses with coaches and staffers and has a good feel for the inner workings of the organization, even if Thibodeau and Layden did their best to keep the media at arm’s length.
As familiar with the league and its inner workings as Petersen is, being a part of the operation opened his eyes to a facet he had never seen before.
“I’m 57 years old, so I’ve been around for a long time,” Petersen said. “But I’ve learned so much from Ethan in the past three weeks, more than I’ve learned about being an executive over the past 21 years from people I’ve been around. I think it speaks volumes of Ethan, of how he conceived of this whole thing, put the team together that executed it, his inclusivity with Cheryl Reeve, Scott Layden and Ryan Saunders. All of it.”
After much debate and discussion internally on the candidates, Petersen endorsed the decision to bring in Rosas. Petersen saw an organization that was fractured and viewed Rosas’s plan for bringing them together as the most compelling.
“Coming into it, the successful teams I’ve seen are ones where this is alignment between business, basketball, coach and owner,” Petersen said. “Those four have to be on the same page. They all had strengths in that area, but Gersson was just outstanding in that area of the interview process.”
On the day Rosas was introduced as the next president of basketball operations, the Wolves posted a video of Petersen interviewing him, the first words fans heard from Rosas’s mouth about joining the team.
Local reaction to Petersen’s role was largely positive. Truth be told, Petersen’s credibility among Wolves fans ranks much higher than the organization itself.
That is something Casson is trying to change. If they did indeed get this right, if Rosas becomes the stable, innovative, collaborative and successful leader of the basketball operations that the Wolves have been searching for, Petersen, along with the rest of the group who conducted the process, will be partly to thank for it.