It felt like a Minnesota Timberwolves upset was in store when the Denver Nuggets’ home crowd was in a whiteout, and the Wolves were wearing their white jerseys. In the three games before Minnesota took the court, the lower-seeded team managed to steal home-court advantage from their opponent. But in typical Timberwolves fashion, they were the team to end the run of upsets, losing to Denver 109-80.
After an electrifying win over the Oklahoma City Thunder just 48 hours before, the Wolves looked like they stayed up all night playing Call of Duty rather than preparing for a playoff game.
A step late here, a miscommunication there.
But what transpired for Minnesota late Sunday evening is more than just the result of a few too many MW2 matches.
The Nuggets took an 8-0 lead, and Minnesota’s numerous faults were on full display in the nationally-televised outing. The Wolves would climb back against the Mile High team, gaining a 1-point lead at the 1:38 mark in the first quarter. However, that lead would be short-lived. Denver guard Bruce Brown nailed a turnaround jumper to put his team back on top. The shot would signal the beginning of the end for the Wolves, who trailed for the remainder of the game.
When a team loses by nearly 30 points, there’s typically enough blame to go around. Minnesota’s leading scorers, Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns, only combined for 11-30 from the field. Rudy Gobert, a player whose game has been overshadowed by the assets it took to bring him to the Twin Cities, still looks to be compromised by injury. But while the Wolves’ top three players fell short during Sunday’s blowout loss, Chris Finch keeps getting most of the blame.
Regardless of where you stand on the “Fire Chirs Finch” movement, it’s become clear that something needs to change within Minnesota’s scoring strategies – and fast. Repeatedly, we’ve seen teams coached by Finch undergo numerous offensive outages. Whether it was last year’s Memphis Grizzlies series or some random Wednesday game against the Detroit Pistons, the Timberwolves have had a knack for not being able to put up points consistently. The result? A league-wide bottom-10 offense.
Considered an “offensive guru,” Finch has yet to provide his team with a competent approach to that side of the ball. While watching Minnesota’s play-in loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, Hall of Famer and in-game analyst Reggie Miller commented about how well the Timberwolves moved the ball on offense. Coincidentally, he said that while they had a double-digit lead. But as the Lakers crept their way into a double-digit game, Miller made another remark about Minnesota’s ball movement or lack thereof. “Where’s all that moving and cutting we saw earlier,” he questioned.
Stagnant offense has been a tale as old as time since Finch’s arrival in February 2021. He prefers a more free-flowing type of offense, with constant movement off-ball. But when you are forced to play two lumbering 7-footers, with one who has no touch outside of just a few feet from the rim, a motion offense won’t suffice. That’s especially true against a Nuggets team that prefers to stand pat rather than chase guys around all game. The front office traded for Mike Conley, a veteran point guard who excels in the pick-and-roll, to help bolster the team’s underwhelming offense. However, we hardly ever see it.
Another perplexing Finch move? He prefers his teams to abstain from high pick-and-roll sets. For a team with two of the league’s top bigs – one who’s a premier popper, the other a roller with immense roll-gravity – you’d think Minnesota would utilize more PnR to help get their offense rolling. Denver is notorious for utilizing the drop scheme when defending the PnR. And although that may hinder the number of points Rudy scores, other players like Ant and Conley would greatly benefit from openings in the midrange.
Finch isn’t the only one to blame for Minnesota’s blunder in Ball Arena. Coming into the contest, the Timberwolves had played three games in the seven days, while the Nuggets earned a full week of rest before Sunday’s matchup. Denver’s high altitude home-court advantage also likely played a vital role in Minnesota’s meandering in-game movement.
But offensive woes have been a season-long dilemma for the Wolves. The team’s ownership group believed Finch could take on the task of coaching a two-center lineup, given his time with Anthony Davis and Demarcus Cousins in New Orleans. But KAT and Gobert aren’t AD and Boogie, and Finch wasn’t the head coach of that what-if Pelicans team. That’s not Chris Finch’s fault. Instead, the front office is to blame.
On the contrary, the Wolves have to make the best of a bad situation. They have two top-5 bigs, and they have Mike Conley, who excels in PnR actions. Maybe it’s time for Finch to implement a few additional on-ball screens. He signed on to coach a team constructed predominantly of young, inexperienced players who he could mold into learning his preferred style of play. I genuinely like Finch as a coach. It could just be a Darvin Ham-Lakers situation where the pieces he has simply don’t fit together as well as the front office planned.
The series is far from over. The Wolves will get some much-needed rest and time to adjust to their opponent’s home altitude. Down 0-1 to Denver in a 7-game series, Finch will need to press all the right buttons to pull off the upset and advance.
