Kevin Love’s looked like every inch the finished product so far tonight in the T-Wolves’ visit to Chicago, and if the hosts go on to lose their third in a row, it might be worth asking if team morale was permanently damaged by Snackgate ’09. Writes Hoopsworld‘s Bill Ingram, “in case you’re wondering why it’s a bad idea to hand an inexperienced coach the head chair for an NBA franchise, you’re starting to see it in Chicago.”
We’re talking about a team that provides food (at least a fruit tray) to the visitor’s locker room before each game and makes food available to their own players as well. It’s also a team that has never had an issue with players eating before a game, even at their lockers. Ben Gordon has often taken ribbing for his habit of making – not just eating, but actually whipping out condiments, constructing, and eating – peanut butter sandwiches in his locker before games.
So all of a sudden Vinny Del Negro decides to not only go off on a group of players, but also fine them for eating in the locker room before a game. Fines were less than a thousand dollars each, but still it’s a strange way to make a point.
It seems to be par for the course for Vinny Del Negro, however, who is going to great lengths to try and establish his authority in the locker room. Given that he’s failed to do it in any traditional way, he beginning to do it in ways that make him seem small and petty. This is a team that fired Scott Skiles at about this time last season because his shrill, power-hungry ways were alienating players. Now it seems they replaced him with someone equally as shrill.