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With seemingly constant rumors regarding the job status of Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Kurt Rambis, Glen Taylor, the team owner is unwilling to respond. He will neither fully back his second year coach nor acknowledge his job status hinges on the team’s play to finish the season. Taylor does, however, see aspects in his team that are less than acceptable.

"What they haven’t been able to do is to kind of put that together and have players consistently having good nights, so they can count on them," Taylor told HOOPSWORLD. "We haven’t been able to put together the defensive scheme that we need, that’s a team type of concept."

The Timberwolves currently stand at 17 wins this season, which is already a two game improvement from last year. However, with the changes made to the roster heading into this year, the additional wins come from somewhat better players filling out the roster, not a better team.

"I think the things that have been positive are probably more individual," said Taylor. "You’ve seen Kevin Love really having growth in his play and consistency. Though Wesley (Johnson) is a rookie, I think you can see that he’s learning. He had a lot to learn and now with a chance to start, you can see some of his skillset now. He still has a long way to go. It’s that type of growth."

Kevin Love had a great string of double-doubles, Wes Johnson is taking advantage of more playing time after the trade of Corey Brewer and Michael Beasley is showing he can score the ball. Yet, as the three best players on the Timberwolves, they each have glaring weaknesses in their games. If they are going to be the core of this team for the future, they must find ways to expand on what they already do on the court.

"When you watch players, in all of them there’s a tremendous amount of potential with the players on this ball club," said head coach Kurt Rambis. "You can see it. Now it’s up to the players to continue to work hard to develop that potential and realize that potential."

Potential is great, but Taylor expected better results this season. Reasonable enough to understand his team wouldn’t contend for the NBA title or even a playoff berth, the season is still a disappointment.

"Team-wise, we just haven’t put it together like I hoped we would have," Taylor told HOOPSWORLD. "It is youth, but still, these all aren’t rookies. We expect Wesley to learn a lot as a rookie, but the other guys have all played a year or two. Jonny (Flynn), that’s been a setback because of his injury and he hasn’t even gotten back to his rookie form. That has hurt us, but I was hoping you’d see more of these, what you’d call ‘inexperienced mistakes’ in the begging of the year, but as we went on cut those down. I don’t know exactly, but I assume if I checked the record I’m going to find turnovers are about the same at the end of the year as they were at the beginning of the year. That wouldn’t be my expectation of the guys."

The "core" of the Minnesota Timberwolves is usually defined mainly as Kevin Love, Michael Beasley and Wesley Johnson and although it’s great to find players you want to build a team around, other aspects obviously are needed.

"I think you keep the core together," Taylor told HOOPSWORLD. "My sense is that you have two things. Number one is that you have a person like Martell Webster, who has been injured a lot this year, who has some experience. Maybe some of those guys can bring experience to the team. Also, I’m sure they’re going to look around and see if there is a unique player with a little more experience that we can throw into the game occasionally when things start going bad. I remember in the early years that I was here, we did that with Terry Porter. When things started to get kind of bad, you put Terry in and he calmed the whole thing down."

"My guess is that David (Kahn) and Kurt(Rambis) will look for someone like that, who they could put in," continues Taylor. "I think that’s one of the ingredients that you just need on a team…somebody who is kind of stable and says, ‘We can get through this.’"

{AUTHOR_BOX}They could use a calming, veteran presence on the roster the rest of this season, as the Timberwolves are about to embark on a remarkably tough stretch to finish the year. Their eleven remaining games include road games against Dallas, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Denver and Phoenix, while their remaining home games include visits from Boston, Chicago, Miami and Phoenix.

"We want our guys to continue to work and grow as individuals and work and grow and learning how to play with each other," said Rambis. "Especially coming up, the teams that we’ll be playing, these are teams that are gearing up for the playoffs and these are great challenges for us to get individual measurements and where we are as a ball club too. These are good challenges for guys and we want our guys to be competitive and to look at these situations as competitive environments, go out and do the best job that they can."

"With young players, you never want to flush opportunities," continued  Rambis. "These are opportunities to grow and to learn and get better. If you let them go, you’re not going to get them back. They’re gone for good."

Losing by 32-points at home to the Sacramento Kings Sunday afternoon was not a good start. The rest of the schedule may become incredibly brutal if the players aren’t listening to their coach and begin listening to the rumors of his demise.

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