Everything in Minnesota Timberwolves world is once again upside down in a season seemingly determined to teach us that the only thing we can certainly expect is uncertainty. After winning four games in a row, capped off by a victory over the third-seeded Sacramento Kings, the Wolves went on a three-game slide that included a historic upset by the tanking Portland Trail Blazers. Nearly every time the Timberwolves begin to build momentum toward becoming a threat in the playoffs, they suffer an inexplicable loss to a bottom-5 team. Similarly, nearly every time you’re ready to count them out and give up on the season, Minnesota strings together a few big wins that keep you engaged.
It’s truly been an emotional rollercoaster for Wolves fans this year. As a result, every time things seem to hit rock bottom, there is an impulsive reaction from the fan base to call for a coach to be fired or a player to be traded. The displeasure with the team is palpable, and more than justified. Glen Taylor waited forever to sell the team, only to sell it to two men who have no team ownership experience. In classic new owner fashion, they made a big splash early on in their tenure by hiring new POBO Tim Connelly. And in classic new POBO fashion, he immediately made a splashy trade that right now looks very bad. Therefore, it will have repercussions extending many years into the future.
Given that this all happened in the offseason right after the Wolves most successful year since Jimmy Butler was in town — right after the future was finally starting to look bright, sunny, and full of first round draft picks again — people have every right to be mad and calling for heads.
As a Wolves diehard, I feel I’ve developed a pretty good filter for what is an overreaction by a scarred and scorned fanbase, and what is a fully processed, nuanced take based on reason. After all, skeptics have been trying to trade Karl-Anthony Towns on Twitter for years. Their voices get louder every time he has a bad game, especially if it happens in a high leverage moment. Of course, both are great so long as they create a good discussion.
Still, I was surprised to see voices call for Chris Finch to be fired after the tough loss in Portland. The man lovingly dubbed as Finchy by the players and fanbase has been almost unanimously viewed as a good coach since he arrived. Finch coached the Wolves to the playoffs. He implemented a creative defense that gave them an identity when they had none. And he’s known to hold players accountable in practices and film sessions. Thus, I had to ask myself, is it fair to blame Finch for the team’s overall performance this season, and their inability to consistently beat bad teams? Or are people simply looking for someone to place blame on as the shit inches closer to hitting the fan?
When it comes to coaches, unless you are a member of the Wolves staff, it’s much harder to evaluate their performance than a player. All we really get to see them do is answer questions in interviews, call timeouts, and occasionally make animated gestures on the sideline while yelling things we can’t hear at referees. Really, our primary way to determine whether or not a coach is good from the outside, may also be the most unfair to them. Does the team have a good record compared to preseason expectations? If so, good coach; if not, bad coach.
That thought process is unfair, in general. From the moment you take the job as a coach, a lot of things are out of your hands other than the plays you draw up, your philosophies, and the pep talks you give. Some coaches have more power to make decisions than others. In some situations, they give input to the GM/POBO about what the team needs and what type of player they should try to trade for and sign.
But ultimately, the POBO is the coach’s boss. They make final decisions on how the roster is constructed, shape it in their image, and can dictate who plays how many minutes if they truly desire. Just like in any power structure, or workplace, a coach is incentivized to appease their bosses desires. They control their access to income, can fire them if they “underperform,” or are simply displeased that you don’t go along with their decisions.
Furthermore, an executive can hire a coach coach into an awful situation (knowingly or not), and the coach can look bad because a GM set them up for failure. Ryan Saunders probably wasn’t ready to be a head coach. However, Gersson Rosas really didn’t do him any other favors besides hiring him. Metaphorically speaking, Rosas told Ryan to captain a sinking ship, then fired him when he couldn’t patch an impossible leak. Rosas set Saunders up to captain the tank, then hired Finch in a highly criticized manner, while claiming Finch was the guy he always wanted in a vein attempt to avoid bad publicity.
If Rosas had hired Finch to coach the tanking Wolves two years before like he said he wanted to, we’d probably have a very different opinion of Finch as a coach. We would have watched him loose a lot of games with a poorly constructed roster, and many likely would have concluded it was his fault, like they are now.
Once again, the front office and POBO caused the current struggles that the Wolves are having making two centers fit together, not the coach. A coach should have some expectations make most things work, that’s their job. However, if you construct a roster that is highly unbalanced, you put your coach at a major disadvantage.
So how then can we actually parse if Finch is a “good” coach or not? I base my opinion on the strategies Finch says he wants to implement in interviews, and how good the team looks when they properly implement those strategies on the court. And from my eye test, when the team plays in Finch’s style, they look great.
Since arriving on the Wolves, Finch has preached ball movement as a key to success. He wants to teach offensive guidelines, more than set plays, to encourage a randomness that will throw off opponents. This year, the Wolves have been at their best on offense when they keep the ball moving as they did in their recent win over Sacramento and the New York Knicks. The team has looked their worst when they let the ball get sticky and play isolation all game.
Of course, this concept of creating randomness seems a bit abstract and difficult to implement. That’s likely part of why savvy veteran role players like Kyle Anderson and Mike Conley have picked it up faster, and looked like such natural fits into the system. They know more about how to get themselves open. They’ve played for teams that ran similar offensive concepts like the San Antonio Spurs, Memphis Grizzlies, and Utah Jazz. And they just have more experience playing basketball, in general. Conversely, some of the younger players seem to be picking up the concept slower, and not executing it as well. Anthony Edwards played iso ball for most of his life before coming to the NBA. Towns isn’t as young, but he hasn’t played on a movement-based team like this before.
One could argue that you have to coach to the strengths of your best players, especially if they can’t learn your concepts quickly. However, there is also a lot of reason to believe that if this team played with ball movement more consistently, they would be a more consistently good offense.
Similarly, last year Finch felt the best way to cover up for the roster’s lack of rim protection was to create a fly around defense that focused on putting pressure on perimeter players and causing turnovers. It wasn’t perfect, but it successfully patched the hole in the roster, making the Wolves an above average defense. They ranked 13th in defensive rating, and 5th in opponent turnovers per game.
Finch is certainly not blameless in the bad losses. But it would be unfair to pin the team’s inability to live up to expectations on him. The concepts he’s introduced in his tenure with the Wolves have improved the team greatly. It would be a shame to not see him have the chance to coach another season. Many of the things that have caused struggles this year, including roster construction and injuries, are not his fault. The team plays well when they execute his concepts. If Edwards can learn how to play in his system better and become a high-level decision maker, it could ultimately raise his ceiling as a player.
