If you solely went box-score hunting to find out what happened in Tuesday night’s game, you wouldn’t have been surprised: The Milwaukee Bucks throttled the Minnesota Timberwolves, 139-112. It was a familiar scene. Wolves looked good early, then fell apart. And even though they hadn’t lost a game by double digits since Jan. 29th against the Philadelphia 76ers, this one was predictable given the whirlwind of events in the prior 48 hours.
While the final score may not have caught your attention, we got a peek at how new head coach Chris Finch might run the show.
There’s a belief that relieving a coach of his duties mid-season provides a jolt or a reset that next game. Yeah, not so much for the Wolves on Tuesday. Perhaps the particulars of the change were a factor, what with a former Toronto Raptors assistant taking over. There’s a lot of dots to connect when it comes to what all went down with the coaching switch.
But on the court last night, two things were clearly different from what we have seen much of this year and last.
First, the offense worked through Karl-Anthony Towns. He was the maestro all night and posted a career-high 11 assists. He showed off his passing abilities, and who’s going to complain about your best player having the ball as much as Towns did last night? The answer should be nobody. He also attempted a season-high 19 shots. It goes without saying, in the long run you’re likely to have more success if the ball is working through your best players.
Towns wasn’t necessarily playing second fiddle this year, the offense just wasn’t going through him as much as it should’ve. In his opening press conference, Finch mentioned how critical it is for Towns to have the ball, and Towns constantly got touches against the Bucks.
The Timberwolves absolutely LAUNCHED threes early and often in Milwaukee. While it had the feel of a modern NBA game, the Wolves’ 3-point efficiency (35%) may have had you considering shoving forks into your eyeballs. But continue to launch, they did.
Minnesota shot a franchise-record 54 threes against the Bucks. Finch didn’t hesitate to make changes. You have to respect him for showing up and having his squad ready to let it fly. Malik Beasley benefited the most, making six of the nine threes he attempted (nice!). The rest of the Wolves, no bueno.
The immediate intrigue with Finch is how his style and scheme are implemented and what tangible evidence of improvement we see before this season ends. While this will be tricky to navigate given that it was a mid-season change with a coach who wasn’t previously on the staff, it’s still perfectly acceptable to have expectations.
And you have to factor in the Wolves’ first-round pick next year. It’s never too early to look ahead when you’re nearing the All-Star break and your team has the worst record in the association.
We all know by now that the first-round selection they own is top-3 protected. So while improvement is welcome and everyone wants to see positive steps forward before the end of this season, there isn’t going to be a whole-hearted endorsement of winning.
Nobody expects Finch to have everything solved by season’s end and for there to be unanimous agreement that he was the right choice. Fans just want to see something, anything, that gives them hope for 2021 and beyond.
Last night provided some of that as the Wolves got the ball in the hands of their franchise cornerstone more. They played the way the game has been headed for years now, by shooting plenty of threes. The key going forward will be getting more perimeter threats in Finch’s system. For one night, final score aside, there were a couple of noticeable shifts in the Wolves’ approach.
