We’re a little more than a quarter of the way through the 2024-25 NBA season, and it feels like the Minnesota Timberwolves have already experienced an entire season’s worth of ups and downs.
There was the worryingly lethargic season-opening loss against the Los Angeles Lakers. The Wolves blew a fourth-quarter lead but came back from down 10 to beat the Denver Nuggets in a gritty early-season victory. Minnesota blew out the Charlotte Hornets, Chicago Bulls, and Blazers in a three-game stretch that had fans believing another conference finals run was imminent.
Then came the dark times. The Wolves sandwiched a thrilling overtime win against the Sacramento Kings and Julius Randle’s game-winning shot to beat the Phoenix Suns between a three-game losing streak to the Miami Heat and Portland Trail Blazers and a demoralizing four-game losing streak to the Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics, Houston Rockets, and Kings. As a result, the Timberwolves dropped to 8-10 on the season. They bounced back to win four straight while flashing glimpses of last year’s league-leading defense.
Now at 12-11, the Timberwolves sit in ninth place in the loaded Western Conference, but as we’ve seen as the season goes on, Finch is starting to provide more answers to the questions.
He has said that it takes roughly 20 games for a team to figure out how to play with each other. Mercifully, the Wolves are finally figuring out how to play with each other. Almost as importantly, Finch is starting to learn what makes his team tick. The fifth-year head coach has a tall task to make things work on the fly after the blockbuster trade that sent Karl-Anthony Towns to New York and inserted Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo into prominent roles with their new team.
Finch admitted that he probably got the closing lineup wrong when he reinserted Mike Conley for Nickeil Alexander-Walker down the stretch, and the Timberwolves blew a late lead to Miami.
He also admitted he wished he would have played Naz Reid to close down the Rockets, a game the Wolves led by five with two minutes left in the fourth quarter and ended up losing by six points in overtime. Reid left the game with eight minutes and 23 seconds left and didn’t return until Minnesota was trailing by eight points with 54 seconds left in overtime. He had 19 points, seven rebounds, and was a plus-6 in 27 minutes in the Rockets game while the starters struggled all night.
It was a rough stretch with some quick-trigger Wolves fans calling for an early season head coaching change if things didn’t turn around quickly. But Finch is learning more about his team and is making the necessary adjustments. The Timberwolves were looking to extend their winning streak to four games with a tough matchup against the Golden State Warriors. Naz Reid had a decent game until the fourth quarter when the Wolves held a precarious six-point lead. The lead dwindled to three points, and it looked like the Timberwolves were getting ready to commit another late-game atrocity.
Finch could have made a change and gone back to his starting lineup to close things out, but Naz Reid and Co. had other plans. Over the next ten minutes, the Wolves turned an 80-77 lead into a 107-90 blowout win in the Bay. Naz played lockdown defense all night and was a plus-15 in the fourth quarter. He ended the game with nine points, 10 rebounds, four assists, three steals, and two blocks.
It was the right call to ride Naz through the fourth quarter, even if it meant keeping Julius Randle on the bench for the entire fourth quarter and giving his newly acquired star only 24 minutes in the game. The Wolves have hit the part of the season where Finch needs to unlock his best lineups, egos be damned.
The Wolves have the fifth-worst clutch net rating in the NBA despite playing the fifth most clutch minutes heading into Friday’s game with the Lakers. Minnesota’s regular starting lineup of Mike Conley, Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels, Julius Randle, and Rudy Gobert boasts a robust plus-7.5 net rating this season. That has proven to be one of the better starting lineups in the NBA, but opponents pound it in the fourth quarter. Finch’s preferred quintet has a minus-22.6 net rating in the final 12 minutes.
Their net rating is minus-23 when you plug in NAW for Conley. However, as a whole, the Wolves are plus-1.8 in the fourth quarter this season. Finch’s starting lineup with Naz Reid instead of Julius Randle has only played seven minutes together in the fourth quarter, but what a glorious seven minutes they were. The Conley/Ant/McDaniels/Reid/Gobert lineup is a whopping plus-42.6 in those seven minutes in heaven.
Maybe a little more Naz Reid and a little less Julius Randle down the stretch, when you need to play free-flowing team basketball instead of a your-turn-my-turn jumbled mess, is the answer. Finch is still learning his team and has time to make a few more mistakes before they become fatal. He had two years to figure out how to make Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Rudy Gobert work. He can take a few more weeks to unlock Randle and DiVincenzo.
The Wolves are improving and showing brief glimpses of regaining last year’s swagger. However, it might take Chris Finch a little longer than we had originally hoped.
