The official fire Chris Finch thread

[Greenbolt90]

Game 3 we won by 5 was close. Game 4 we won by 7, we were ahead by 20 with 5 minutes left. It wasn't an actual close game, neither was game 5.

those warrior comebacks occurred with our regular guys on the floor though, so you can't just discount them. those were legitimate comebacks. that's not to mention that in game 5 the timberwolves were only up by 9 with 7 minutes left, so you can't even make the 'the warriors only came back at the end' argument there

We’re talking about games that weren’t in doubt. I’m going to spend anymore time on this.

right, but your 'games weren't in doubt' point doesn't even counter what i said about game 5

because it was a 9 point game with 7 minutes left, an 11 point game with 4 minutes left, and an 11 point final margin (with our regulars in the whole time). like, to even start to push 'blowout' territory you have to quibble and say 'well, we were up 15 with 2 minutes left' when the final margin was 11 and it was around 10 for most of the 4th quarter. that's not enough to make up for Steph

even if you want to say the timberwolves would've won game 4 with a healthy Steph we'd still be down 3-2

[BlacJacMac]

And if Steph plays, you can subtract Kuminga's 24 PPG over the final 4 games.

[Worm Guts]

those warrior comebacks occurred with our regular guys on the floor though, so you can't just discount them. those were legitimate comebacks. that's not to mention that in game 5 the timberwolves were only up by 9 with 7 minutes left, so you can't even make the 'the warriors only came back at the end' argument there

We’re talking about games that weren’t in doubt. I’m going to spend anymore time on this.

right, but your 'games weren't in doubt' point doesn't even counter what i said about game 5

because it was a 9 point game with 7 minutes left, an 11 point game with 4 minutes left, and an 11 point final margin (with our regulars in the whole time). like, to even start to push 'blowout' territory you have to quibble and say 'well, we were up 15 with 2 minutes left' when the final margin was 11 and it was around 10 for most of the 4th quarter. that's not enough to make up for Steph

even if you want to say the timberwolves would've won game 4 with a healthy Steph we'd still be down 3-2

We don't what Steph would have added, that's unknown. The Wolves were ahead by 20 points in the 4th quarters of both games 4 and 5, these are games where the Wolves were not being tested. We don't know what happens if they are, but they weren't close.

[Greenbolt90]

We’re talking about games that weren’t in doubt. I’m going to spend anymore time on this.

right, but your 'games weren't in doubt' point doesn't even counter what i said about game 5

because it was a 9 point game with 7 minutes left, an 11 point game with 4 minutes left, and an 11 point final margin (with our regulars in the whole time). like, to even start to push 'blowout' territory you have to quibble and say 'well, we were up 15 with 2 minutes left' when the final margin was 11 and it was around 10 for most of the 4th quarter. that's not enough to make up for Steph

even if you want to say the timberwolves would've won game 4 with a healthy Steph we'd still be down 3-2

We don't what Steph would have added, that's unknown. The Wolves were ahead by 20 points in the 4th quarters of both games 4 and 5, these are games where the Wolves were not being tested. We don't know what happens if they are, but they weren't close.

you're cherry-picking margins at certain moments in the game that fit your narrative, lol

[Worm Guts]

right, but your 'games weren't in doubt' point doesn't even counter what i said about game 5

because it was a 9 point game with 7 minutes left, an 11 point game with 4 minutes left, and an 11 point final margin (with our regulars in the whole time). like, to even start to push 'blowout' territory you have to quibble and say 'well, we were up 15 with 2 minutes left' when the final margin was 11 and it was around 10 for most of the 4th quarter. that's not enough to make up for Steph

even if you want to say the timberwolves would've won game 4 with a healthy Steph we'd still be down 3-2

We don't what Steph would have added, that's unknown. The Wolves were ahead by 20 points in the 4th quarters of both games 4 and 5, these are games where the Wolves were not being tested. We don't know what happens if they are, but they weren't close.

you're cherry-picking margins at certain moments in the game that fit your narrative, lol

I feel like you miss the point. The Wolves had a comfortable lead the entire 4th quarter. They had no fear, they weren't being pushed. It's not a simple issue of whether Curry is worth X amount points. It's a different game if it's close.

[Greenbolt90]

We don't what Steph would have added, that's unknown. The Wolves were ahead by 20 points in the 4th quarters of both games 4 and 5, these are games where the Wolves were not being tested. We don't know what happens if they are, but they weren't close.

you're cherry-picking margins at certain moments in the game that fit your narrative, lol

I feel like you miss the point. The Wolves had a comfortable lead the entire 4th quarter. They had no fear, they weren't being pushed. It's not a simple issue of whether Curry is worth X amount points. It's a different game if it's close.

no, i get that that could be a factor

the issue is that a 9 to 11 point lead is not a comfortable enough lead to say that the timberwolves relaxed because they weren't being pushed. if it had been a 20 point lead most of the game? sure. but 9 to 11 isn't that kind of margin

[Note30]

i don't understand brushing over Rudy when evaluating the talent of this team. clearly better than Randle and i think he's even more valuable than Ant (if we pull back the veil of improper utilization and look at fundamental value). Ant has way more holes in his offense than Rudy has in his defense with Ant being nearly as bad defensively as Rudy is offensively. but i digress

Pretty sure you're just a Rudy fan if you actually think there's even a lick of comparison between the two players. If Rudy was actually as valuable on defense as Ant is on offense he would never get played off the floor regardless of scheme. Also offense in this league matters far more than defense. Take a look at every rule implemented in the past 30 years. Ant would also be a lot better on the defensive end if he didn't have the weight of the entire offense on his shoulders. Do you have any idea how much it takes out of you to even hold onto the ball for as long as Ant does? Out everyone on the team he plays the most minutes has the most usage and is responsible for our entire offense. FOH. Rudy is just out there running. He's so insignificant on offense that we have to curtail an offense to always have him in the lane, because otherwise we'd play 5 on 4.

the point is that Rudy is a huge piece of this team and the improper utilization of him is the biggest gripe i have with Finch

the core of the problem here imo lies in the timberwolves' peel switch scheme against the p&r. early in the season Finch began implementing a peel switch scheme as essentially an exit strategy out of low drop coverage

so the timberwolves went to a low drop as their primary p&r coverage, with the point-of-attack defender chasing the ball-handler around the screen and Rudy playing a low drop, but if the poa defender did not screen navigate adequately and ended up well behind the play then Rudy would switch onto the ball-handler and the poa defender would take Rudy's man

however, halfway through the season the players began opting for the switch in virtually every instance even when the screen navigation by the poa defender was more than adequate. for whatever reason Finch never addressed this issue

most opponents in the regular season weren't smart enough to simply take Rudy out to the perimeter and exploit the mismatch. they'd try to drive into him or would pass out as if they were playing against drop coverage. so we never really faced the major downside of our improper use of the scheme

till we played the thunder in the playoffs and they exploited it to hell with Rudy switching onto SGA. a huge reason for our downfall

if we ran the peel switch scheme properly it would yield a lot of benefits. there's the obvious benefit of keeping Rudy in a rim protection role and avoiding mismatches when the drop option is excercised, but then there's also the benefit of not getting burned by the switches nearly as much because dropping sometimes and peel switching sometimes creates ambiguity, so the ball-handler would generally be much more hesitant to back out and take Rudy to the 3pt line because they often wouldn't know if Rudy was even switched onto them to begin with. there's also the benefit of keeping Rudy near the basket subsequent to the p&r for rebounding and rim protection

but Finch never addressed the issue of unconditional peel switching, so we didn't get to see any of these benefits in the playoffs.

Do you know why you don't fight over or under the screen and off the ball handler and rely on drop coverage? Because it pulls away multiple defenders and or can lead to an easy foul. During the switch the guard or ball handler has 5 options. It opens up the floor in that split second and with a semi competent player they either get an open shot, an more open lane, the ability to call for an additional screen or they can displace the defender by waiting on the screen. If you know it's going to happen every time? You reject the screen and then get an open lane to just go at the mid-range. You know who's really **** good at shooting the mid-range? Every single guard who handles the ball for the Thunder. I think Shai actually holds the record. So yes switching on it made infinitely more sense that giving the Thunder that split second. Although in the end it didn't really matter. Finch was picking between two terrible options.

Finch didn’t misuse Rudy — he hit the ceiling of what you can do with him against a five-out offense. OKC’s spacing (Chet, J-Dub, JWill) and SGA’s manipulation of pace puts any big in a blender. You can peel switch correctly all day, but against elite guards, they’ll still get the matchup they want. Finch subbing in Naz wasn’t tanking the defense — it was choosing mobility over getting gutted anyway.

The idea of the peel switch is good: use it as an emergency bailout when the POA defender gets beat. But even when peel switching was done properly, SGA still hunted Rudy and got what he wanted. Let’s not pretend that was all on coaching.

Come on — teams have been pulling Rudy into space for years. Luka, Steph, Harden — there’s a book on this. The Wolves were able to hide it in the regular season because of elite perimeter defense and weaker matchups. OKC had the tools to expose it: elite decision-maker (SGA), five-out spacing, tons of movement. There's literally so much tape and proof yet Rudy stans blame it on the rest of the team. Once is a chance, 5 times is proof.

Transition D? We committed more turnover and second chance issue points.

Jaden on POA? He’s excellent there when locked in. Who else do you want guarding SGA? But he's going to get beat.

Naz switches? That’s the price of having a mobile stretch big. Naz can’t drop — hedging risks corner 3s. You pick your poison.

Finch “cratered the defense”? Nah.
Finch coached a team with "two"bigs, a raw young star, aging guards, and no true offensive engine. That’s not failure — that’s overachievement. Even in the playoffs, the real issue was scoring droughts. You’re not winning playoff games scoring 94, 88. Doesn’t matter how good your defense is.
Yes, Rudy got exposed — but that’s not all on Finch. That’s what happens when you play a five-out offense with a big who can't defend in space. Finch did what he could.



we consistently switched Rudy onto perimeter players in the playoffs, taking away dramatically from his rim protection and rebounding and rendering him 'unplayeable.' in the conference finals SGA recognized that our 'drop coverage' was a switch in disguise and began taking Rudy out to the 3pt line and exploiting him to hell. it was a disastrous situation that Finch had no answer for other than to invariably sub in Naz for Rudy, tanking the team's defense even further

there's a number of other defensive errors that Finch has made. a lack of focus on transition D, an overemphasis on crashing the defensive glass, continually putting Jaden on poa when his strengths lie elsewhere, endlessly switching Naz onto perimeter players when he's way better at hedging, unconditional extreme ball pressure, lack of help schemes in the regular season, etc

in the regular season the timberwolves finished with the 6th rated defense, in part because their phenomenal defensive personnel overcame the philosophical shortcomings, and in part because most teams aren't smart enough to pull back the first layer of defense and exploit the flaws underneath

but against great offenses in the playoffs those flaws will invariably get exposed

outside of the anomalous game 3, we gave up 121 ppg against the thunder. to put that into perspective, if you adjust the thunder's season average ppg for the playoffs and measure our points allowed against that figure, we essentially played like the 4th worst defense against the thunder outside of game 3

that's what happens when you make as many mistakes in defensive philosophy that Finch has made and you play the right team that knows how to exploit those mistakes

yielding a point output equivalent to the 4th worst defense in the league with the defensive talent that the timberwolves have is completely unacceptable

you say what could Finch have done with the offense when the roster construction hinders the offense so much

well, you give yourself a chance if your team is phenomenal on the other end. the timberwolves have the personnel to do just that. they have poa defenders, wing defenders, off-ball defenders, an all-time rim protector

we have a very defensive-oriented roster, which inherently means not much offense. if the coach craters the defense with a litany of errors in defensive philosophy then you have no shot

Comments in blue/purple above.

[Loaf_of_bread]

There is a significant overinflated sense of pride that people have in the talent of this team. We played exactly as expected. I would argue we over performed this playoffs. Finch stated in exit interview he feels we have 8 starters.

That being said. Randle is the second best player on this team behind Ant. That says a lot. This is your unsubstantiated opinion. Not quite sure "how that says a lot"

So if your goal is to pin this whole thing on Randle and no one else is able to carry the offensive load the way he did during the season then where is Finch supposed to be able to get those points back? Or is Randles failure solely Finch's responsibility? Randle is an inefficient scorer.
Has been in the entirety of his career. The numbers can be taken with a grain of salt considering he was the primary option in NY for a few years, but he isn't a great scorer. Below average defender, as well as EXTREMELY low effort guy. Effort is tough to quantify in any metric. Gives up points to the opposition out of pure laziness.

Better yet, both of our best stars need the ball to succeed. ?

We do not have a balanced team. We do not have a core to support Edwards. We do not even have a consistent PG.fair enough. Still maybe confused though.. so ant and randle need the ball to succeed.. is this pg supposed to run the offense, or pass it to Ant one possession, and then Randle the next possession so they can succeed?

Sliver of chance at a championship?? We had that last year until it was proven that our frontcourt experiment was a mistake.so rudy is the reason we didn't have a chance last year?
Not sure what this sentence means.

Also the NBA is arguably at its weakest talent in ages. I don't care what the stats say. So if we don't have a shot now it's done till 2032. ???

i don't understand brushing over Rudy when evaluating the talent of this team. clearly better than Randle and i think he's even more valuable than Ant (if we pull back the veil of improper utilization and look at fundamental value). Ant has way more holes in his offense than Rudy has in his defense with Ant being nearly as bad defensively as Rudy is offensively. but i digress

the point is that Rudy is a huge piece of this team and the improper utilization of him is the biggest gripe i have with Finch

the core of the problem here imo lies in the timberwolves' peel switch scheme against the p&r. early in the season Finch began implementing a peel switch scheme as essentially an exit strategy out of low drop coverage

so the timberwolves went to a low drop as their primary p&r coverage, with the point-of-attack defender chasing the ball-handler around the screen and Rudy playing a low drop, but if the poa defender did not screen navigate adequately and ended up well behind the play then Rudy would switch onto the ball-handler and the poa defender would take Rudy's man

however, halfway through the season the players began opting for the switch in virtually every instance even when the screen navigation by the poa defender was more than adequate. for whatever reason Finch never addressed this issue

most opponents in the regular season weren't smart enough to simply take Rudy out to the perimeter and exploit the mismatch. they'd try to drive into him or would pass out as if they were playing against drop coverage. so we never really faced the major downside of our improper use of the scheme

till we played the thunder in the playoffs and they exploited it to hell with Rudy switching onto SGA. a huge reason for our downfall

if we ran the peel switch scheme properly it would yield a lot of benefits. there's the obvious benefit of keeping Rudy in a rim protection role and avoiding mismatches when the drop option is excercised, but then there's also the benefit of not getting burned by the switches nearly as much because dropping sometimes and peel switching sometimes creates ambiguity, so the ball-handler would generally be much more hesitant to back out and take Rudy to the 3pt line because they often wouldn't know if Rudy was even switched onto them to begin with. there's also the benefit of keeping Rudy near the basket subsequent to the p&r for rebounding and rim protection

but Finch never addressed the issue of unconditional peel switching, so we didn't get to see any of these benefits in the playoffs. we consistently switched Rudy onto perimeter players in the playoffs, taking away dramatically from his rim protection and rebounding and rendering him 'unplayeable.' in the conference finals SGA recognized that our 'drop coverage' was a switch in disguise and began taking Rudy out to the 3pt line and exploiting him to hell. it was a disastrous situation that Finch had no answer for other than to invariably sub in Naz for Rudy, tanking the team's defense even further

there's a number of other defensive errors that Finch has made. a lack of focus on transition D, an overemphasis on crashing the defensive glass, continually putting Jaden on poa when his strengths lie elsewhere, endlessly switching Naz onto perimeter players when he's way better at hedging, unconditional extreme ball pressure, lack of help schemes in the regular season, etc

in the regular season the timberwolves finished with the 6th rated defense, in part because their phenomenal defensive personnel overcame the philosophical shortcomings, and in part because most teams aren't smart enough to pull back the first layer of defense and exploit the flaws underneath

but against great offenses in the playoffs those flaws will invariably get exposed

outside of the anomalous game 3, we gave up 121 ppg against the thunder. to put that into perspective, if you adjust the thunder's season average ppg for the playoffs and measure our points allowed against that figure, we essentially played like the 4th worst defense against the thunder outside of game 3

that's what happens when you make as many mistakes in defensive philosophy that Finch has made and you play the right team that knows how to exploit those mistakes

yielding a point output equivalent to the 4th worst defense in the league with the defensive talent that the timberwolves have is completely unacceptable

you say what could Finch have done with the offense when the roster construction hinders the offense so much

well, you give yourself a chance if your team is phenomenal on the other end. the timberwolves have the personnel to do just that. they have poa defenders, wing defenders, off-ball defenders, an all-time rim protector

we have a very defensive-oriented roster, which inherently means not much offense. if the coach craters the defense with a litany of errors in defensive philosophy then you have no shot

This is the 2nd time you have stated: an over-emphasis on defensive rebounds.

I unfortunately have to disagree emphatically. The team as a whole is not a good rebounding team. The thought process that we should set up for transition, and focus less on defensive rebounds honestly boggles my mind.

[Greenbolt90]

i don't understand brushing over Rudy when evaluating the talent of this team. clearly better than Randle and i think he's even more valuable than Ant (if we pull back the veil of improper utilization and look at fundamental value). Ant has way more holes in his offense than Rudy has in his defense with Ant being nearly as bad defensively as Rudy is offensively. but i digress

the point is that Rudy is a huge piece of this team and the improper utilization of him is the biggest gripe i have with Finch

the core of the problem here imo lies in the timberwolves' peel switch scheme against the p&r. early in the season Finch began implementing a peel switch scheme as essentially an exit strategy out of low drop coverage

so the timberwolves went to a low drop as their primary p&r coverage, with the point-of-attack defender chasing the ball-handler around the screen and Rudy playing a low drop, but if the poa defender did not screen navigate adequately and ended up well behind the play then Rudy would switch onto the ball-handler and the poa defender would take Rudy's man

however, halfway through the season the players began opting for the switch in virtually every instance even when the screen navigation by the poa defender was more than adequate. for whatever reason Finch never addressed this issue

most opponents in the regular season weren't smart enough to simply take Rudy out to the perimeter and exploit the mismatch. they'd try to drive into him or would pass out as if they were playing against drop coverage. so we never really faced the major downside of our improper use of the scheme

till we played the thunder in the playoffs and they exploited it to hell with Rudy switching onto SGA. a huge reason for our downfall

if we ran the peel switch scheme properly it would yield a lot of benefits. there's the obvious benefit of keeping Rudy in a rim protection role and avoiding mismatches when the drop option is excercised, but then there's also the benefit of not getting burned by the switches nearly as much because dropping sometimes and peel switching sometimes creates ambiguity, so the ball-handler would generally be much more hesitant to back out and take Rudy to the 3pt line because they often wouldn't know if Rudy was even switched onto them to begin with. there's also the benefit of keeping Rudy near the basket subsequent to the p&r for rebounding and rim protection

but Finch never addressed the issue of unconditional peel switching, so we didn't get to see any of these benefits in the playoffs. we consistently switched Rudy onto perimeter players in the playoffs, taking away dramatically from his rim protection and rebounding and rendering him 'unplayeable.' in the conference finals SGA recognized that our 'drop coverage' was a switch in disguise and began taking Rudy out to the 3pt line and exploiting him to hell. it was a disastrous situation that Finch had no answer for other than to invariably sub in Naz for Rudy, tanking the team's defense even further

there's a number of other defensive errors that Finch has made. a lack of focus on transition D, an overemphasis on crashing the defensive glass, continually putting Jaden on poa when his strengths lie elsewhere, endlessly switching Naz onto perimeter players when he's way better at hedging, unconditional extreme ball pressure, lack of help schemes in the regular season, etc

in the regular season the timberwolves finished with the 6th rated defense, in part because their phenomenal defensive personnel overcame the philosophical shortcomings, and in part because most teams aren't smart enough to pull back the first layer of defense and exploit the flaws underneath

but against great offenses in the playoffs those flaws will invariably get exposed

outside of the anomalous game 3, we gave up 121 ppg against the thunder. to put that into perspective, if you adjust the thunder's season average ppg for the playoffs and measure our points allowed against that figure, we essentially played like the 4th worst defense against the thunder outside of game 3

that's what happens when you make as many mistakes in defensive philosophy that Finch has made and you play the right team that knows how to exploit those mistakes

yielding a point output equivalent to the 4th worst defense in the league with the defensive talent that the timberwolves have is completely unacceptable

you say what could Finch have done with the offense when the roster construction hinders the offense so much

well, you give yourself a chance if your team is phenomenal on the other end. the timberwolves have the personnel to do just that. they have poa defenders, wing defenders, off-ball defenders, an all-time rim protector

we have a very defensive-oriented roster, which inherently means not much offense. if the coach craters the defense with a litany of errors in defensive philosophy then you have no shot

This is the 2nd time you have stated: an over-emphasis on defensive rebounds.

I unfortunately have to disagree emphatically. The team as a whole is not a good rebounding team. The thought process that we should set up for transition, and focus less on defensive rebounds honestly boggles my mind.

the transition offense is really just an ancillary point. it's more about the number of open 3s we give up off of offensive rebounds

maybe the issue is more that guys are wandering into no man's land. not really crashing the defensive glass, but also not staying with their man. which leads to all those open 3s

[Greenbolt90]

@Note30

'Pretty sure you're just a Rudy fan if you actually think there's even a lick of comparison between the two players. If Rudy was actually as valuable on defense as Ant is on offense he would never get played off the floor regardless of scheme. Also offense in this league matters far more than defense. Take a look at every rule implemented in the past 30 years. Ant would also be a lot better on the defensive end if he didn't have the weight of the entire offense on his shoulders. Do you have any idea how much it takes out of you to even hold onto the ball for as long as Ant does? Out everyone on the team he plays the most minutes has the most usage and is responsible for our entire offense. FOH. Rudy is just out there running. He's so insignificant on offense that we have to curtail an offense to always have him in the lane, because otherwise we'd play 5 on 4.'
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i don't see why the improper usage of Rudy should factor into his value when improper usage holds a player back from exerting their actual value. it would be like if the warriors just put Steph on the block the whole game or the lakers put Shaq at the 3pt line and we factored their lack of impact in those situations into their value. like no, their value is way higher than that; that value just isn't being realized because they're not being used to their strengths

i agree that offense holds solidly more weight than defense when measuring player impact. the issue is that Ant has far more significant holes in his offense than Rudy has in his defense. Ant is an inefficient scorer, not a great playmaker, not a great mover, and has no idea how to attack gap help. whereas Rudy is an all-time rim protector and a passable on-ball perimeter defender. Rudy is admittedly abysmal at transition D and perimeter rotations, but these are ancillary traits at the center position

the 'offense matters a lot more than defense' point would hold water if Ant was great offensively and Rudy great defensively. but Ant is more just 'pretty good' offensively at this stage, whereas Rudy is an all-time great defensive player

you say Ant would be a lot better defensively if he didn't have to carry as much of a load offensively. a couple of counterpoints:

firstly, there have been tons of players throughout history that had to carry that kind of offensive load or more and were still vastly better defenders than Ant. Jordan, LeBron, CP3, Giannis, Wade, Kawhi, etc

these are elite defenders and Ant struggles to even be passable on that end. Ant clearly has motor issues to some degree; even his offense is inconsistent because of it. these motor issues prevent Ant from being great on both ends simultaneously. as his offensive load has increased his defense has dropped off precipitously (after being an elite iso defender in '22). some defensive dropoff is to be expected with an increase in offensive load, but not to this extreme. an extreme drop off like this is indicative of motor issues

that's not to mention that an increase in offensive load doesn't usually take much away from a player's off-ball defense, which isn't nearly as dependent on exerting physical energy as on-ball D is. but Ant's off-ball D has always been terrible

secondly, even if it were the case that Ant's poor defensive play were a natural, unavoidable byproduct of his heavy offensive load i still don't see why his defense should be graded higher than what his actual defensive impact is. because the good offensive player/good defensive player version of Ant would be a literal impossibility. you could say 'but Ant is skilled on both ends, while Rudy isn't offensively,' but if high two-way impact Ant can't possibly materialize consistently on the court then it's an irrelevant point
_______________________________________________________

'Do you know why you don't fight over or under the screen and off the ball handler and rely on drop coverage? Because it pulls away multiple defenders and or can lead to an easy foul. During the switch the guard or ball handler has 5 options. It opens up the floor in that split second and with a semi competent player they either get an open shot, an more open lane, the ability to call for an additional screen or they can displace the defender by waiting on the screen. If you know it's going to happen every time? You reject the screen and then get an open lane to just go at the mid-range. You know who's really **** good at shooting the mid-range? Every single guard who handles the ball for the Thunder. I think Shai actually holds the record. So yes switching on it made infinitely more sense that giving the Thunder that split second. Although in the end it didn't really matter. Finch was picking between two terrible options.'
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you say the drop coverage pulls away multiple defenders, leads to easy fouls, and yields open shots and open lanes

you know what leads to committing multiple defenders to a much larger degree, a lot more fouling, and yields even more open shots and more open lanes?

switching and putting a mismatch on the ball-handler. because then you practically HAVE to choose between yielding an open shot or helping, and you're not necessarily shutting off drives to the rim like you are in a drop

i mean, considering your priorities a drop is precisely the coverage you want to run with this timberwolves roster

you say you don't want to commit two to the ball? well, you're not even necessarily committing two to the ball in a drop as Rudy's responsibility is often to cover both the ball-handler and the roller, which he's phenomenal at doing

the thunder in particular were a good matchup to run low drop against because, unlike say the Luka/Lively, Luka/Gafford p&r's in the west finals last year, an SGA/Hartenstein or SGA/Chet p&r isn't a great playmaking/lob threat combo, which is why Hartenstein often had to settle for top-of-the-paint floaters, which we'll live with (i know there's the SGA/Chet pick and pops too, i'll get to those)

you say you want to avoid fouling? well, the drop prioritizes rim protection, while limiting isolations, drives, and defensive rotations, and ceding the midrange. it's literally the least foul-prone coverage you can run

as far as screen rejections this is admittedly something the timberwolves chronically struggle with, mainly, i believe, because Finch overemphasizes ball pressure, which leads to preemptive screen navigation

i think NAW has gotten great at stymying screen rejections, so one solution there would be to simply have NAW guard poa over Jaden. i think NAW is a better poa defender anyway

otherwise i think the timberwolves' issues with screen rejections are more a philosophical error than an inherent problem with drop coverage. because they have adequate screen navigators who don't need to preemptively screen navigate, and the backline defense can cover up a botched screen navigation far easier than it can cover an ill-defended screen rejection

i have no idea what you're talking about when you say 'if you know it's (the drop) going to happen every time you reject the screen and then get an open lane to just go at the midrange'

even against the timberwolves, who are bad at guarding screen rejections, ball-handlers go around screens far, far more often than they reject them. because even a team like the timberwolves who tend to preemptively screen navigate, it's not like they're halfway around the screen before the ball-handler starts going around; it's more like the defender is just starting to lean that way, but they're still in position to defend a screen rejection

the timberwolves do abide by a philosophy high on preemptive screen navigation, but it's only their more extreme instances of preemptive screen navigation that teams can take advantage of

the fact that you said 'if you know it's going to happen every time you can just screen reject' makes me wonder if your evaluations here are even based on watching in detail what's happening on the court, or if you're just guessing. because screen rejections just aren't even a particularly common thing

SGA could get hot from midrange, yes. i totally concede that this could happen. he's killed our drop before. but i think you're severely overstating how guaranteed it is that a low drop would yield efficient offense for the thunder. the midrange is an inherently inefficient shot in today's nba; it's far from guaranteed that even an elite midrange shooter like SGA could consistently shoot well enough to produce efficient offense on those shots, particularly when you consider that he'd have a great poa defender like Jaden or NAW on his back in this scenario, an aspect that you appear to have completely ignored, and an all-time rim protector in Rudy in front of him

but if SGA were to get hot from midrange there's all sorts of things that we could do to counter it in the drop. we could start putting Rudy in a higher drop and rotating a low man to Rudy's man like we did against dallas in the west finals last year. or i think my favorite strategy would be what we were doing at one point against the thunder, which was providing heavy gap help on SGA in the drop. i just would have been more nuanced with the gap help; help more when SGA really creates separation from the screen navigator, but stunt or back off if he doesn't

now these adjustments to the drop do admittedly involve defensive rotations, thus compromising the team's off-ball defensive structure, which are things the drop generally tries to avoid. the difference between the drop and switching though is that in the drop you're at least giving yourself a chance, initially, to defend without rotations. and then even if you do end up having to rotate you're rotating more selectively while giving up way less rim pressure and keeping Rudy at the rim
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'Finch didn’t misuse Rudy — he hit the ceiling of what you can do with him against a five-out offense. OKC’s spacing (Chet, J-Dub, JWill) and SGA’s manipulation of pace puts any big in a blender. You can peel switch correctly all day, but against elite guards, they’ll still get the matchup they want. Finch subbing in Naz wasn’t tanking the defense — it was choosing mobility over getting gutted anyway.

The idea of the peel switch is good: use it as an emergency bailout when the POA defender gets beat. But even when peel switching was done properly, SGA still hunted Rudy and got what he wanted. Let’s not pretend that was all on coaching.

Come on — teams have been pulling Rudy into space for years. Luka, Steph, Harden — there’s a book on this. The Wolves were able to hide it in the regular season because of elite perimeter defense and weaker matchups. OKC had the tools to expose it: elite decision-maker (SGA), five-out spacing, tons of movement. There's literally so much tape and proof yet Rudy stans blame it on the rest of the team. Once is a chance, 5 times is proof.'
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the timberwolves' peel switching wasn't done properly because the entire point of the peel switch is to try and play a drop initially and then peel switch if the screen navigation is inadequate

if you peel switch every time then that's functionally identical to a standard switch and you may as well just standard switch. it was honestly the worst of both worlds the way we ran it because Rudy would still be dropped back initially, but Jaden or whoever would switch almost immediately. so we gave up the midrange, and we weren't providing rearview contests, and we were putting ourselves in mismatches

if you peel switch every time and do it early every time then of course the ball-handler is going to know a switch is coming. but they wouldn't know if you execute it late and only do it some of the time. that's the way the peel switch is inherently meant to be run

as far as guarding the pick-and-pop with Chet, since peel switching would often apply to that, Chet is a solid, but not great, 3pt shooter, which opens up a lot of optionality for defensive coverages. i mean, **** dude. we were pretty content with leaving him open in that series and he didn't even burn us much. the problem is that we switched the p&p's virtually every time and invariably put Rudy on an island against SGA. we took advantage of Chet's iffy shooting by helping off of him on drives and stuff, but against p&p we never took advantage

Chet's still a solid shooter, so i'm not saying completely abandon him. but stunting and later/shorter closeouts are options when rotating to him, so playing a drop vs an SGA/Chet p&p is way more doable than against like Brunson/KAT for instance. we also have Jaden as our primary poa defender who's 6'9 with a ridiculous recovery, so a true peel switch would've been particularly effective against an SGA/Chet p&p

pushing the thunder into giving it to Chet in p&p's via drop coverage could've also yielded the benefit of giving us time to scram switch Rudy off of SGA at times

as far as Luka, Steph, Harden etc pulling Rudy out, the difference in those cases, even with us last year, is that Rudy wasn't regularly asked to switch out onto those guys. the infamous Luka shot over Rudy last year for instance was in the waning seconds when everyone switches everything. those kinds of plays happened in relatively rare spots when Rudy was asked to switch onto elite perimeter players and those plays aren't really indicative of anything meaningful because until this year Rudy wasn't asked to do that much

as far as Rudy's struggles against 5-out spacing in general i believe that in the past (this applies more to his jazz days) the issue was that when he'd go to rim-protect off his man his teammates simply didn't rotate adequately. Rudy would invariably rim protect adequately, but his teammates invariably failed to cover for him adequately. it's that simple

that wasn't really the issue against the thunder though. the main issue against the thunder was that Rudy was usually switched onto SGA, and our help schemes weren't very effective because Finch largely stopped running them halfway through the season. along with a litany of other ancillary issues. but i don't think the 5-out spacing specifically gave us problems; we were switching Rudy onto SGA regardless of whether the center was Hartenstein or Chet, and we were generally pretty content with leaving Chet open from 3
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'Transition D? We committed more turnover and second chance issue points.

Jaden on POA? He’s excellent there when locked in. Who else do you want guarding SGA? But he's going to get beat.

Naz switches? That’s the price of having a mobile stretch big. Naz can’t drop — hedging risks corner 3s. You pick your poison.

Finch “cratered the defense”? Nah.
Finch coached a team with "two"bigs, a raw young star, aging guards, and no true offensive engine. That’s not failure — that’s overachievement. Even in the playoffs, the real issue was scoring droughts. You’re not winning playoff games scoring 94, 88. Doesn’t matter how good your defense is.
Yes, Rudy got exposed — but that’s not all on Finch. That’s what happens when you play a five-out offense with a big who can't defend in space. Finch did what he could.'
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we did commit a lot of turnovers and gave up a lot of second chance points, but we added significantly to the tax of the turnovers with our usual abysmal transition D

this team has way too high a defensive iq to be this bad of a transition defensive team. for the first half of the '24 season we were a great transition defensive team. so i know we have the potential

but halfway through the '24 season Finch shifted the philosophy to crashing the offensive glass a bit more, which i think made sense because we needed offense more than defense. but the team slowly slipped into increasingly crashing the offensive glass more over time, well beyond what i think the original philosophical shift entailed, which led to an increasing malaise in terms of players getting back on defense and matched up. by season's end we were back to being an abysmal transition defensive team and Finch never corrected the issue. it's understandable that with some new players this year the transition D is going to take a backseat, but it shouldn't to this degree imo, and it should've been corrected late last season anyway. at least improve it a little bit. the issue has seemingly gotten no attention whatsoever by the coaching staff

i don't think Jaden's status as a great poa defender is on firm ground right now. he didn't reach that status till this season through improved screen navigation, but in the second half of the season into the playoffs Jaden fell into lazy screen navigation habits as he began peel switching vs p&r virtually every time. would Jaden still be a good screen navigator if the timberwolves were to go back to standard drop coverage and screen navigation became imperative again? i'm not sure

if Jaden has reverted back to being an iffy poa defender, not unlikely at all, then the decision to put him on poa near-constantly becomes particularly nonsensical. but even if Jaden is still a great poa defender i disagree with the decision because Jaden has so much off-ball/rim protection value, and we have Ant/NAW to guard poa. even Jaylen Clark who i think has shown enough offense now to eat into Conley/Divencenzo's minutes some

Jaden can guard poa for some of the non NAW/Clark minutes (with Ant taking some as well). but i strongly feel that Jaden should be primarily used in an off-ball role more because he's phenomenal in that area. it's not so much that he's bad guarding poa, he's not; it's that he's phenomenal as an off-ball defender and we have multiple other players who can guard poa. that's not to mention that Jaden is a great secondary rim protector and a better wing defender than a poa defender

in addition, the constant poa duties have cratered Jaden's off-ball defensive abilities because he isn't getting the reps

like, the benefits of switching Jaden from poa to the wing would be massive to me

Naz is elite at hedge & recover (the timberwolves have great off-ball defenders to execute such a scheme to boot) and is a terrible perimeter on-ball defender with a strong tendency to send his man away from help. 'pick your poison' as if the two options here are equally bad, lol

'two bigs'

are you referring to the lack of defensive versatility here? if so, one of them is an all-time level rim protector and between Conley/Jaden/Rudy/NAW/Divencenzo the timberwolves have one of the most defensively stacked teams in the league

'raw young star'

raw? Ant's a borderline top 10 player in the league, lol

'aging guards'

dude, it's just Conley. that's literally it. and Conley is still very good defensively. then Ant/NAW/Divencenzo is a great guard trio

'no true offensive engine'

the one point i'll give you there. i'd also add that our spacing sucks ass unless we take out Jaden & Rudy and nuke the defense

'Finch didn't fail, he overachieved'

would you be saying that if we lost in the first or second round? because the timberwolves were outplayed by both the lakers and warriors and just won by happenstance

in games 2/3/4 the lakers were able to endlessly create open shots at will against us, while we struggled mightily with their defense. game 2 lakers won despite horrific 3pt shooting luck, game 3 Luka was sick and played miserably yet it was still close as hell through 3 before LeBron ran out of gas, game 4 Ant has a crazy anomaly of a game and we have an anomaly of an offensive rebounding performance and we still barely win. we should've been down 3-1 in which case we almost certainly lose

warriors with no Steph win one game, keep two other games close, and another one close for large portions of the game. we only truly blew them out once. warriors would've likely been up at least 3-2 with Steph, or could've even beat us in 5

i know that all might sound like a weird way to look at those series. i understand to a degree the objection of 'we won those series. we can always play the what if game, but the fact is that we won'

but i'm not trying to invalidate the timberwolves' west finals appearance here. i'm trying to gauge the future. if we were outplayed in both series on our way to the west finals, but won due to lucky breaks, that does not bode well for the future unless we make a major change like supplanting the coach. if your argument is 'Finch overachieved because we made the west finals' i think you're overindexing on results and ignoring the essence of what happened in those games. if Luka hadn't gotten sick for a game and a couple balls had bounced differently in game 4 we lose to the lakers and you'd be singing a completely different tune right now despite the fact that the quality of our play would've been exactly the same

'you're not winning playoff games scoring 94, 88. doesn't matter how good your defense is'

what about 103? what about 126? those were our other two losses to the thunder, lol

with a better coach i think we still lose games 1, 2, and 5, win game 4, and then lose in 6 or 7

my argument though isn't that a better coach would've enabled us to beat the thunder. right now the thunder are better than us by too wide a margin

my argument is that in Ant you have a player with tremendous offensive potential. down the road Ant probably figures out playmaking, how to become more efficient, and how to attack gap help, while adding to his off-ball game

then that 103 point output by the timberwolves in game 2 gets bumped up to 110 and with dramatically improved defense under a new coach you end up going up 3-2 on the thunder and have a real chance to win it all

if we bring in a solid defensive coach this team can realize it's potential as a phenomenal defensive team, which could conceivably overcome the roster's offensive shortcomings

if we stay pat with Finch then the roster hampers the offense and the coach hampers the defense. then you're not great on either end, which practically guarantees failure

[shrink]

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2461108

On the General Board, 92 of 101 voters think MIN should keep Chris Finch.

[Loaf_of_bread]

The General Board follows this team at a level we do. Their take should be of the utmost importance.

[Neeva]

Every other west team fan base would want their head coach’s head on a platter after two west finals appearances where they CHOKED were completely outclassed and flat out outcoached! Except the wolves fan base that are content with just getting close and because they are afraid the wolves will hire someone worse than mid Finch. Soo much ptsd with Minnesotan fans

[KGdaBom]

:lol: every other west team fan base would want their head coach’s head on a platter after two west finals appearances where they CHOKED were completely outclassed and flat out outcoached! Except the wolves fan base that are content with just getting close because they are afraid they will hire someone worse than mid Finch. Soo much ptsd with Minnesotan fans

I see no reason to believe that if we fired Finch we would get somebody better. Back to Back seasons being one of the final 4 teams playing for the championship is really good.

[Loaf_of_bread]

If Finch is capable of winning a championship, fine, I don’t think he is capable..

[Neeva]

If Finch is capable of winning a championship, fine, I don’t think he is capable..

Of course not he gets easily outclassed by head coaches like Jason freaking Kidd and OKC coach in wolves most important series. Finch is very average.
If Finch somehow wins a championship here, most wolves fan would want to keep him for life… even if he sucks and is completely average right after ,they would never be in favor of firing him like Denver did to Malone expections here are soo **** low it’s embarrassing.

[Neeva]

:lol: every other west team fan base would want their head coach’s head on a platter after two west finals appearances where they CHOKED were completely outclassed and flat out outcoached! Except the wolves fan base that are content with just getting close because they are afraid they will hire someone worse than mid Finch. Soo much ptsd with Minnesotan fans

I see no reason to believe that if we fired Finch we would get somebody better. Back to Back seasons being one of the final 4 teams playing for the championship is really good.

You are classic example of an easy to please Minnesota fan that is content with getting CLOSE.

[Domejandro]

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2461108

On the General Board, 92 of 101 voters think MIN should keep Chris Finch.

It’s pretty obvious to anyone not super emotionally invested. Minnesota has been to two straight Western Conference Finals despite both teams having huge flaws.

Even with my criticisms of Coach Finch, firing him after a record like that would seem pretty dumb.

[KGdaBom]

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2461108

On the General Board, 92 of 101 voters think MIN should keep Chris Finch.

It’s pretty obvious to anyone not super emotionally invested. Minnesota has been to two straight Western Conference Finals despite both teams having huge flaws.

Even with my criticisms of Coach Finch, firing him after a record like that would seem pretty dumb.

100%

[KGdaBom]

:lol: every other west team fan base would want their head coach’s head on a platter after two west finals appearances where they CHOKED were completely outclassed and flat out outcoached! Except the wolves fan base that are content with just getting close because they are afraid they will hire someone worse than mid Finch. Soo much ptsd with Minnesotan fans

I see no reason to believe that if we fired Finch we would get somebody better. Back to Back seasons being one of the final 4 teams playing for the championship is really good.

You are classic example of an easy to please Minnesota fan that is content with getting CLOSE.

What do you mean by content? Am I happy we made it to the WCF 2 years in a row? You bet your ass I am. Do I want more? You bet your ass I do. Do I go into every offseason miserable and feeling like $hit because we didn't win the title? No I don't.