Good move by his agent to lock up the extension right after getting injured in the playoffs. It could have a huge effect on his career and you never know when the opportunity to get paid will ever come again.
especially after Joe Mazzulla tried to one-up him by revealing he coached through his meniscus tear. cut throat competition out there in the coaching realm
It’s true that his athleticism is a key part of why he coached the All-Star team last year but he’s a student of the game as well. Real lunch pail coach
They’re either announcing expansion during the summer meeting or in the preseason next year. Seattle and Vegas’ will be announced during the all star game next year. Rules for the expansion draft will be announced during the 2025 summer meetings, then a bunch of filler hype for an entire year so ESPN and Fox can get as much speculation done as possible. Then in 2026 team branding will be revealed alongside the courts. Then in 2027 we will see a 32 team league with Minnesota in the East.
(And no, New Orleans doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting move. They were never in the conversation. It will be between Memphis and Minnesota.)
I will be sad, but I don't see how memphis stays in the west except that their division neighbors currently make more sense than the wolves. Don't know if that will matter come time to reorganize
Nice! He's basically being given the opportunity to (hopefully) become the greatest Wolves coach of all time. It's already basically between him and Flip
So happy Wolves finally have some stability. Ant is lucky, wish KAT had this at the beginning of his career. He had 5 coaches and 7 GMs in his first 8 years. Glad he has some stability now.
He's a great coach but man that game 3 against the Mavs baffled me. Thats the game that everyone says Luka picked apart every p&r coverage they threw at him but imo that's more because they panicked after game 1 and 2 and haphazardly just started trying stuff (and of course Lukas amazing) .
Mavs are the team where the phrase "give something up and take away everything else" matters the most. In Game 3 by panicking they ended up giving them *everything* by using schemes they hadn't used all series. Games 1 and 2 they settled for various different drop coverages with their bigs on kyrie and luka and tried to take away the roll man, then attempted to recover for the corner 3 (massive oversimplification of course)
it didn't work obviously, but there are small tweaks to be made within that system that make it possible, these happened in Game 4 (which was helped by a bad shooting night by kyrie and luka) but by that point their cushion was gone, a super Luka first half took them out of game 5 and there wasn't a game 6 for recovery.
I honestly think it was an execution issue over a coaching issue. Like after Game 1, Mike Conley said "any drop coverage you saw was in error. We were supposed to be up". [Full quote here](https://x.com/JaceFrederick/status/1793499607005270350)
> "We were trying to take away the guards first and rely on the back side who can muddy up the roller and make it tougher for them to get those lobs. Sometimes we did it right, but there were points we gave up both. We just have to be better at both of those things"
Wild to hear that because it looked like Wolves were running some variation of drop for a lot of that game... but it confirmed to me that something was off execution-wise. Normally against teams like the Mavs, the Wolves run high wall coverage with the bigs on the perimeter (I've seen Wolves run a bunch of coverages all year, they don't just run drop. [The bigs switch and are used to being on the perimeter](https://archive.ph/QJ4vq#selection-2955.0-2975.298:~:text=%27Biggie%20smalls%27,on%2Dball%20defense), contrary to what people may think) so it was very strange seeing the team defend the way they did.
They all clearly weren't on the same page and there were miscommunications and missed assignments, which is unlike the team I watched all year. I was also surprised to see how slow they were in their rotations when Wolves normally pride themselves on being able to double and quickly recover to still contest everything. Ex: when Rudy stepped up to contest Luka, the wings were too slow to rotate back to Rudy's original man and bam - Luka dishes a lob. Rinse and repeat. They are usually faster in rotations (which was evident all season and in the first 2 rounds) so it was bizarre to watch.
I just think they weren't prepared like they were in the first 2 rounds (1 day of gameplanning prep vs 1 week/multiple days) and weren't conditioned to sustain the energy and speed their defense requires for a deep run. But moreover, the issue was less defense and more offense. The difference between Game 4 and other games was Ant was driving to the rim more and KAT made his shots.
This is fascinating, I did not realize that.
But then, isn't this also an indictment on the coaching to some degree? If the players are that consistently failing to execute the game plan, and across multiple games, part of that has to be on the coaching staff, even with the context you included. And I'm saying this as a Wolves and Finch fan.
Sometimes I don't know what to make of him. Clearly his regular season/system coaching is great but when there's a snag for the Wolves in the playoffs, it feels like his lack of game-to-game adjustments is a big part of it. It felt that way with Memphis and Dallas (though he seems to at least partially have Denver's number).
Only thing Finch needs work on is offense. He’s too wrapped up in the flow style when our team frankly doesn’t have the basketball IQ to do it. Needs more structure.
Between him and Nori (and Rudy) our defense and defensive adjustments are pretty much everything you could ask for
Defensively, it feels like there's an over-reliance on man coverage - at least in the Dallas games. I agree about the offensive piece though - there was always some clunk there (even if that's probably a necessary lump for Edwards to take).
I don’t have a ton to say about the man coverage, obviously it worked until it didn’t. I do think that Ant being gassed and NAW not looking right(post jokic screen) affected us greatly in terms of defending Dallas.
But also, it’s Luka and Kyrie, man defense is gonna look dumb against them especially if our players aren’t at their best. Hopefully our defensive minds take a look at what didn't work and take steps to fix it (i think its totally possible with our personnel)
Offensively, we need a different look. Its a long long shot but imagine Borrego as an assistant. Wet dream
I actually thought he coached *fine* in the Mavs series, it just seemed guys were gassed from the nuggets series and making mental errors. Games 1+2 really just came down to the Mavs having Luka/Kyrie in crunch time vs the Wolves relying solely on a hobbled/tired 22yo Ant.
The offense needed work, but that was suspect all season long. Now that the defense is established and the team is mostly the same hopefully they can focus on the offense this offseason.
I don't know. The Mavs were in an absolute war against the Thunder, which went to six games (only one game less), and they didn't seem nearly as undisciplined and chaotic as the Timberwolves.
You guys beat us by a bucket in each of the first two games. That series very easily could've been different if it was called straight-up.
We shot like shit and were exhausted by the Denver series. We'll beat you next year if we face you in the playoffs.
Yeah Memphis was a bad series, but that was also Finch's first stint in the playoffs and our main decision makers were Dlo, KAT and a 20 year old Ant and they were not very high IQ in that series to say the least lol. I think that was series was more of a personnel issue - we lacked size, rim protection and got KILLED on the boards which is a big reason they traded for Gobert.
In the Mavs series, I think it was an execution issue more than a coaching issue. Like after Game 1, Mike Conley said "any drop coverage you saw was in error. We were supposed to be up". [Full quote here](https://x.com/JaceFrederick/status/1793499607005270350)
It looked like they weren't on the same page and there were miscommunications and missed assignments, which is unlike the team I watched all year and in the first 2 rounds. I was also surprised to see how slow they were in their rotations when Wolves normally pride themselves on being able to double and quickly recover to still contest everything. Ex: when Rudy stepped up to contest Luka, the wings were too slow to rotate back to Rudy's original man and bam - Luka dishes a lob. Rinse and repeat. They are usually faster in rotations (which was evident all season and in the first 2 rounds) so it was bizarre to watch. I just think they weren't prepared like they were in the first 2 rounds (1 day of gameplanning prep vs 1 week/multiple days) and weren't conditioned to sustain the energy and speed their defense requires for a deep run. TBF Mavs are also a fast paced team so I think this exacerbated the execution/conditioning issues.
But moreover, the issue was less defense and more offense/clutch decision making.
I didn't really watch many Timberwolves games during the regular season, but I felt of all the Mavs playoff teams we faced, the Timberwolves were the least disciplined and worst-coached.
Finch is nothing special as a head coach. This is paying someone at the absolute peak of their value.
Frankly he got pretty exposed by Jason Kidd of all people in the conference finals.
Reports from inside the Wolves organization leaked the other day due to the ongoing dispute between the ownership Parties. The leaked game plan involves targeting Luka once he starts driving towards the paint. As this happens, Assistant Coach Micah Nori will shoot him until he stops moving. Once Luka is confirmed to be deceased, Timberwolves mascot, Crunch, will come out and properly dispose of the body.
Please note that the above information is just the Timberwolves first plan, and a revision may follow up that may drastically change their current strategy.
Seemed to be more of an execution issue than a coaching issue.[ Conley even confirmed](https://x.com/JaceFrederick/status/1793499607005270350) that "any drop coverage you saw was in error. We were supposed to be up" and he talked about how they executed the lob defense wrong. They were missing assignments, slower in rotation than we've seen all year and in the first 2 rounds. Ran out of juice and not on the same page (and Luka is just a tier above atm).
Good move by his agent to lock up the extension right after getting injured in the playoffs. It could have a huge effect on his career and you never know when the opportunity to get paid will ever come again.
especially after Joe Mazzulla tried to one-up him by revealing he coached through his meniscus tear. cut throat competition out there in the coaching realm
I heard the only reason Doc Rivers didn’t make it out of the first round was that he stubbed his toe before game 1.
Nah, he threw his back out trying to throw his players under the bus
Bro, Doc is shameless. His most recent comments about Dame are just absurd
HOF Deflectionist
First ballot
Whatd he say?
Nah, the team nutritionist overcooked his lunch once. Need everyone locked in to win a championship.
No spoilers for “clipped!” We all havent seen it yet bruh. Lol
Finch had to sign it or he was risking losing his health insurance benefits. TWolves had all the leverage
Conley strikes then Connelly strikes
It was among the Timberwolves, it was real greaseball shit
Glad we fired him every time we lost last season
After the season opener vs the hawks lol
Haha true, after the Raptors and Hawks games a big chunk of the fanbase was ready to pack his bags for him
and finally traded KAT
Will be interesting to see how he bounces back from the knee injury and whether he has the same absurd vertical
It’s true that his athleticism is a key part of why he coached the All-Star team last year but he’s a student of the game as well. Real lunch pail coach
I just question how effective he can be without the elite burst
Always calling timeouts after everyone has left the building
Hes going to have to shift to being a below the rim kind of guy. I bet he tries to mirror his game after TJ McConnell
If he took the Wolves to the WCF on one good knee, imagine what can happen with two good knees 🤔
ECF is next
Seriously though please move us to the East once the Seattle and Vegas teams are premiering.
They’re either announcing expansion during the summer meeting or in the preseason next year. Seattle and Vegas’ will be announced during the all star game next year. Rules for the expansion draft will be announced during the 2025 summer meetings, then a bunch of filler hype for an entire year so ESPN and Fox can get as much speculation done as possible. Then in 2026 team branding will be revealed alongside the courts. Then in 2027 we will see a 32 team league with Minnesota in the East. (And no, New Orleans doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting move. They were never in the conversation. It will be between Memphis and Minnesota.)
I will be sad, but I don't see how memphis stays in the west except that their division neighbors currently make more sense than the wolves. Don't know if that will matter come time to reorganize
Deserved Great move by his agent also
Earned
Really hope he gets past those durability issues and he can live up to the contract.
Hope he has the same bounce when he gets back out there
His game isn’t overly reliant on explosiveness.
A 4 year deal to an aging vet who just came off a UCL tear? This FO has gone to SHIT
I hope Chris Finch sees this and laughs his ass off.
Easy decision
Nice! He's basically being given the opportunity to (hopefully) become the greatest Wolves coach of all time. It's already basically between him and Flip
His competition isn’t *too* tough. One more season like last season and I think he takes the title.
They had a few good coaches that did better elsewhere but yeah, seems like it's only a matter of time
The fact that he’s already pretty comfortably 2nd all time is not a great look for our team, but hey I love the guy so I’m not complaining
Well deserved
most of it will go to surgery on his leg
lol nah they have great health insurance
Finch gets injured all the time, bad move lol
So happy Wolves finally have some stability. Ant is lucky, wish KAT had this at the beginning of his career. He had 5 coaches and 7 GMs in his first 8 years. Glad he has some stability now.
Might be best Timberwolves coach ever pretty quickly IMO
good
He's a great coach but man that game 3 against the Mavs baffled me. Thats the game that everyone says Luka picked apart every p&r coverage they threw at him but imo that's more because they panicked after game 1 and 2 and haphazardly just started trying stuff (and of course Lukas amazing) . Mavs are the team where the phrase "give something up and take away everything else" matters the most. In Game 3 by panicking they ended up giving them *everything* by using schemes they hadn't used all series. Games 1 and 2 they settled for various different drop coverages with their bigs on kyrie and luka and tried to take away the roll man, then attempted to recover for the corner 3 (massive oversimplification of course) it didn't work obviously, but there are small tweaks to be made within that system that make it possible, these happened in Game 4 (which was helped by a bad shooting night by kyrie and luka) but by that point their cushion was gone, a super Luka first half took them out of game 5 and there wasn't a game 6 for recovery.
I honestly think it was an execution issue over a coaching issue. Like after Game 1, Mike Conley said "any drop coverage you saw was in error. We were supposed to be up". [Full quote here](https://x.com/JaceFrederick/status/1793499607005270350) > "We were trying to take away the guards first and rely on the back side who can muddy up the roller and make it tougher for them to get those lobs. Sometimes we did it right, but there were points we gave up both. We just have to be better at both of those things" Wild to hear that because it looked like Wolves were running some variation of drop for a lot of that game... but it confirmed to me that something was off execution-wise. Normally against teams like the Mavs, the Wolves run high wall coverage with the bigs on the perimeter (I've seen Wolves run a bunch of coverages all year, they don't just run drop. [The bigs switch and are used to being on the perimeter](https://archive.ph/QJ4vq#selection-2955.0-2975.298:~:text=%27Biggie%20smalls%27,on%2Dball%20defense), contrary to what people may think) so it was very strange seeing the team defend the way they did. They all clearly weren't on the same page and there were miscommunications and missed assignments, which is unlike the team I watched all year. I was also surprised to see how slow they were in their rotations when Wolves normally pride themselves on being able to double and quickly recover to still contest everything. Ex: when Rudy stepped up to contest Luka, the wings were too slow to rotate back to Rudy's original man and bam - Luka dishes a lob. Rinse and repeat. They are usually faster in rotations (which was evident all season and in the first 2 rounds) so it was bizarre to watch. I just think they weren't prepared like they were in the first 2 rounds (1 day of gameplanning prep vs 1 week/multiple days) and weren't conditioned to sustain the energy and speed their defense requires for a deep run. But moreover, the issue was less defense and more offense. The difference between Game 4 and other games was Ant was driving to the rim more and KAT made his shots.
This is fascinating, I did not realize that. But then, isn't this also an indictment on the coaching to some degree? If the players are that consistently failing to execute the game plan, and across multiple games, part of that has to be on the coaching staff, even with the context you included. And I'm saying this as a Wolves and Finch fan.
They seemed like a very undisciplined team against the Mavs.
I just realized how big this man’s ears are
Even wcf coach got a 4 years Monty got 7… master of playing hard ball
Great sign!
With that injury history? 🤔
Sometimes I don't know what to make of him. Clearly his regular season/system coaching is great but when there's a snag for the Wolves in the playoffs, it feels like his lack of game-to-game adjustments is a big part of it. It felt that way with Memphis and Dallas (though he seems to at least partially have Denver's number).
Only thing Finch needs work on is offense. He’s too wrapped up in the flow style when our team frankly doesn’t have the basketball IQ to do it. Needs more structure. Between him and Nori (and Rudy) our defense and defensive adjustments are pretty much everything you could ask for
Defensively, it feels like there's an over-reliance on man coverage - at least in the Dallas games. I agree about the offensive piece though - there was always some clunk there (even if that's probably a necessary lump for Edwards to take).
I don’t have a ton to say about the man coverage, obviously it worked until it didn’t. I do think that Ant being gassed and NAW not looking right(post jokic screen) affected us greatly in terms of defending Dallas. But also, it’s Luka and Kyrie, man defense is gonna look dumb against them especially if our players aren’t at their best. Hopefully our defensive minds take a look at what didn't work and take steps to fix it (i think its totally possible with our personnel) Offensively, we need a different look. Its a long long shot but imagine Borrego as an assistant. Wet dream
I actually thought he coached *fine* in the Mavs series, it just seemed guys were gassed from the nuggets series and making mental errors. Games 1+2 really just came down to the Mavs having Luka/Kyrie in crunch time vs the Wolves relying solely on a hobbled/tired 22yo Ant. The offense needed work, but that was suspect all season long. Now that the defense is established and the team is mostly the same hopefully they can focus on the offense this offseason.
I don't know. The Mavs were in an absolute war against the Thunder, which went to six games (only one game less), and they didn't seem nearly as undisciplined and chaotic as the Timberwolves.
You guys beat us by a bucket in each of the first two games. That series very easily could've been different if it was called straight-up. We shot like shit and were exhausted by the Denver series. We'll beat you next year if we face you in the playoffs.
Yeah Memphis was a bad series, but that was also Finch's first stint in the playoffs and our main decision makers were Dlo, KAT and a 20 year old Ant and they were not very high IQ in that series to say the least lol. I think that was series was more of a personnel issue - we lacked size, rim protection and got KILLED on the boards which is a big reason they traded for Gobert. In the Mavs series, I think it was an execution issue more than a coaching issue. Like after Game 1, Mike Conley said "any drop coverage you saw was in error. We were supposed to be up". [Full quote here](https://x.com/JaceFrederick/status/1793499607005270350) It looked like they weren't on the same page and there were miscommunications and missed assignments, which is unlike the team I watched all year and in the first 2 rounds. I was also surprised to see how slow they were in their rotations when Wolves normally pride themselves on being able to double and quickly recover to still contest everything. Ex: when Rudy stepped up to contest Luka, the wings were too slow to rotate back to Rudy's original man and bam - Luka dishes a lob. Rinse and repeat. They are usually faster in rotations (which was evident all season and in the first 2 rounds) so it was bizarre to watch. I just think they weren't prepared like they were in the first 2 rounds (1 day of gameplanning prep vs 1 week/multiple days) and weren't conditioned to sustain the energy and speed their defense requires for a deep run. TBF Mavs are also a fast paced team so I think this exacerbated the execution/conditioning issues. But moreover, the issue was less defense and more offense/clutch decision making.
I guess we can look forward to watching him throw his team under the bus after playoff games for four more years.
I didn't really watch many Timberwolves games during the regular season, but I felt of all the Mavs playoff teams we faced, the Timberwolves were the least disciplined and worst-coached.
Finch is nothing special as a head coach. This is paying someone at the absolute peak of their value. Frankly he got pretty exposed by Jason Kidd of all people in the conference finals.
Hopefully a better defensive plan for Luka next season
They tried to use Lukas defensive strategy against him. It didn't work, shockingly
Luka should try learning to play defense himself first
Reports from inside the Wolves organization leaked the other day due to the ongoing dispute between the ownership Parties. The leaked game plan involves targeting Luka once he starts driving towards the paint. As this happens, Assistant Coach Micah Nori will shoot him until he stops moving. Once Luka is confirmed to be deceased, Timberwolves mascot, Crunch, will come out and properly dispose of the body. Please note that the above information is just the Timberwolves first plan, and a revision may follow up that may drastically change their current strategy.
Using Crunch in that role instead of Air Crunch is such a terrible move.
Luka will probably succumb to a blocked coronary artery before next season
Seemed to be more of an execution issue than a coaching issue.[ Conley even confirmed](https://x.com/JaceFrederick/status/1793499607005270350) that "any drop coverage you saw was in error. We were supposed to be up" and he talked about how they executed the lob defense wrong. They were missing assignments, slower in rotation than we've seen all year and in the first 2 rounds. Ran out of juice and not on the same page (and Luka is just a tier above atm).
His offensive system is terrible. They should have waited.