Ron Wilson Deserves Contract Extension at BetLM

Ron Wilson Deserves Contract Extension

If Ron Wil­son had the per­son­al­ity of a Barry Trotz or Kirk Muller there would prob­a­bly be a sig­nif­i­cant clam­our in Leafs Nation for GM Brian Burke to offer him a con­tract extension.

But Wilson’s not always the warmest guy on the planet and he tends to rub some peo­ple the wrong way, so there has not been a lot of exter­nal sup­port for a new deal for Wil­son. But by all accounts, Wil­son deserves an exten­sion, and it appears as though Burke is going to give him one.

As Big Burkie points out on his Twit­ter account, the Leafs are 32–17-8 since last year’s all-star break (head­ing into Wednes­day night’s tilt against the Stan­ley Cup cham­pion Boston Bru­ins) and appear to be play­off bound for the first time since the 2004. More than that, many of the key young play­ers are devel­op­ing well (Jake Gar­diner, Carl Gun­nars­son, Phil Kessel) under Wilson’s tutelage.

For a young team that has been plagued with injuries much of the sea­son, the 14–8-2 Leafs (prior to Wednes­day night) have been impres­sive. A coach shouldn’t be judged on his lik­a­bil­ity, but on how his team per­forms. Under Wil­son, the Leafs play hard (usu­ally) and the one anchor every­one enjoys hang­ing around Wilson’s neck – the spe­cial teams – have vastly improved. For what­ever rea­son, fans and media types seem to appre­ci­ate Burke more than Wil­son, and are quicker to give the GM credit when the team wins. But the two have worked in lock-step together to change the cul­ture of enti­tle­ment that used to per­me­ate the dress­ing room.

“Burkie’s the one who termed it ‘Blue and White dis­ease,’” said Wil­son. “Account­abil­ity is a big part (of what we’re try­ing to do here) and that’s what Brian and I talk about all the time.”

Wil­son fig­ures that he and cap­tain Dion Pha­neuf are in the same boat when it comes to a neg­a­tive per­cep­tion out­side of the organization.

“(He’s) mis­un­der­stood by so many peo­ple out­side of our room, because he has a grim look on his face,” said Wil­son. “In the dress­ing room, he’s happy-go-lucky and funny to be around.” Wil­son believes his cap­tain is vastly under-appreciated as a player away from the team.

“He pre­pares very well, he prac­tices hard, he makes sure the guys around him are awake and alert on the bench, and if he’s hav­ing a bad game, he finds some other way that he can have an impact on a game, whether it’s a big hit, or even get in a fight,” said Wil­son. “He’ll always do some­thing to try and change the com­plex­ion of a game in a pos­i­tive way for us.”

“He has a swag­ger,” Wil­son con­tin­ued. “Good play­ers have a solid belief in them­selves and they carry that swag­ger around and their team often adapts that swag­ger. And that’s what we needed, that’s what we didn’t have – a phys­i­cal, hard guy with swagger.”

WEEMS WAS WOBBED

For­mer Rap­tor Sonny Weems is play­ing with Zal­giris Kau­nas, a Lithuan­ian team in the Euroleague, and is writ­ing an enter­tain­ing blog for HoopsHype.com. In his lat­est entry, Weems tells of how play­ing in Europe has largely been reward­ing, except for one inci­dent. “After one of my best games, where I fin­ished with 22 points, 6 rebounds and 2 assists against Brose Bas­kets to win our first Euroleague game, I had a ter­ri­ble sur­prise when I went back home. I got robbed! I had never been robbed in the States. I was like, ‘Man, what is going on? What is the world com­ing to?’ They took some money and a cou­ple of elec­tronic things … Noth­ing seri­ous, but there is some­thing I was really sad about: They took my XBox! I paid like $ 500 for this one and now it’s gone.”

Weems added that the NBA guys who decided to play over­seas “are look­ing smart” right now. “I’m still over here col­lect­ing checks while oth­ers are look­ing for a job at Best Buy.”

That was, of course, before the settlement.

WHILE I’M AT IT

Paulina Gret­zky has closed her “racy” Twit­ter account report­edly on the advice of her dad. Appar­ently Paulina’s twit­ter story is front page news. And yes, we’re all doomed.

Mike Tyson was on Brazil­ian TV singing The Girl From Ipanema. It’s time he went back to doing some­thing less objec­tion­able, like bit­ing ears and threat­en­ing to kill sports writers.

WEENIE OF THE WEEK

Miami Dol­phins run­ning back Reg­gie Bush might want to read up on stuff before he tweets. Bush twit­tered: “Best wishes to for­mer team­mate Steve Glea­son and a speedy recov­ery!” A nice sen­ti­ment, except that Glea­son is suf­fer­ing from ALS, a “pro­gres­sive, fatal, degen­er­a­tive dis­ease with most affected patients dying after 2–3 years.” There’s no cure … mean­ing a speedy recov­ery is not realistic.

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