The official fire Chris Finch thread

[Battletrigger]

We cannot forget that OKC is a 68 wins teams and the Wolves a 50 wins team that avoided the Play in in the last game. They are simply a better teams that matches very well with us.

And, am, some of the SAI whisels were insane, not a excuse, but not fair some times.

[Dalvin]

Finch has his faults. But the reason we lost was not entirely on him.

He took us to TWO WCF! I'd rather have a coach with that track record than roll the dice on someone else.

After years of misery, watching NBA basketball deep into May is something I appreciate!

[Greenbolt90]

i think we should fire Finch. it feels like he's made pretty much every philosophical defensive error you can possibly make:

-insists on constant extreme ball pressure to the point where we're going over screens 40 feet out and giving up blow-bys regularly despite being loaded with great perimeter on-ball defenders

the thing about this ball pressure too is that it isn't the funneling kind of ball pressure. you'd do that if you had bad on-ball defenders. then the philosophy would be 'well, we're going to give up blow-bys anyway, so we may as well ball pressure and funnel them into Rudy.' the ball pressure Finch runs is more like 'we're going to ball pressure AND try to stop you too.' if you have the on-ball defenders the timberwolves have that can be a great strategy against teams that don't have great perimeter creators. it's why it worked so well against denver last year. but against great creators who can score and playmake against that ball pressure it's negative opportunity cost. the detriment of blow-bys and more fouling easily outweighs the positive of eating up shot clock and delaying actions

in games 3 & 4 vs the thunder we actually relented from the ball pressure for once and it's the main reason our defense was so good in game 3. in game 4 our defense wasn't very good and Finch overreacts and goes right back to the ball pressure for game 5

-continually runs a peel switch scheme against p&r. the scheme worked great the first ~1/3rd of the season when we actually ran it properly where:

if screen navigator manages to stay with ball-handler, run a standard drop

if screen navigator falls too far behind, run a peel switch with Rudy taking the ball-handler and the screen navigator taking the screener

but then we fell into just peel switching it virtually every time. it's clearly supposed to be a peel switch scheme and not a standard switch because the screen navigator still tries to screen navigate. but we fell into peel switching it every time and never corrected the issue for some reason. in addition to leading to mismatches it takes Rudy away from the rim. Luka & SGA ate our coverage alive in the playoffs

-switches Naz onto perimeter players instead of hedging. Naz was phenomenal in the hedge when we ran it all the time 2/3 years ago. but now we just switch him onto guys all the time and he gets invariably burned

-doesn't play Rudy enough in the playoffs. but of course, Finch is always having Rudy switch out onto the perimeter now, taking away from his rim protection and rebounding, so when Finch is coming to the conclusion of 'i don't think Rudy's defense/rebounding are enough to make up for his lack of offense right now' it's not really true because if he were utilized right defensively then his defense/rebounding WOULD be enough

-constantly has Jaden guarding poa

Jaden admittedly improved his screen navigation significantly this year after it had been a major issue before, turning himself into a great poa defender. what's frustrating is that when Jaden was a poor screen navigator last year we ran low drop all the time, but now that he's a good screen navigator we run the peel switch all the time and take Jaden's improved poa D out of the equation, which appears to have eaten away at his screen navigation

before Jaden's improvement as a poa defender the decision to put him there was even more nonsensical than it is now, but now my main issue with the decision is that Jaden is hardly ever in off-ball/rim protection roles anymore where he's amazing. Jaden's off-ball D has massively declined as a result, i'd literally call him poor in that area now, because he doesn't get the reps

what's particularly baffling about Finch's decision to have Jaden guard poa is that we have three great poa defenders on the team besides Jaden. Ant (if you limited the length of the stints), NAW, and Jaylen Clark. it's the perfect team to have Jaden be off the ball defensively, but Finch hardly ever does it. the only guy who gets poa duties over Jaden when they're on the floor together is Jaylen Clark

-overprioritizes the defensive glass. the number of open shots we give up off of offensive rebounds is ridiculous. replacing KAT with Randle along with Rudy's rebounding dropoff this year admittedly drops the team's rebounding to a concerning level, so i understand putting more focus on the defensive glass to a degree, but there's way too many instances where the timberwolves have a man advantage around the basket and STILL send someone else in to crash the glass. another detriment of this is that it torpedoes the timberwolves' potential for transition offense

and Finch's other defensive philosophies also happen to hurt the team's defensive rebounding. the constant switching leading to Rudy on the perimeter and a smaller player on the opposing team's center, as well as not playing Rudy enough, which means Naz instead who's a terrible rebounder

-doesn't implement enough help schemes in the regular season

earlier in the season the timberwolves were running a lot of high drop, presumably as an adjustment to Luka killing their low drop in the west finals last year. the high drop features Rudy totally committing to the ball-handler in p&r with the poa defender still chasing from behind, while a low man takes Rudy's man. this was a very effective scheme early in the season, but we stopped running it

in fact, by about halfway through the season we'd largely stopped hedging, stopped providing gap help, and stopped rotating to the rim on drives unless the on-ball defender had been completely taken out of the play. and, of course, we hardly ever doubled anyone, no matter how hot they got, a Finch trademark

what happened i believe is that Finch misdiagnosed what was wrong with our defense. he did correctly recognize that we were in rotation way too much, but he ostensibly thought the main reason for that was that we were playing too much help D. while there was some overhelping at times i think the ball-pressure leading to blow-bys was a far bigger issue

the lack of help schemes from the timberwolves the second half of the season led to them being rusty with help schemes when they inevitably had to turn to them in the playoffs. for instance when they tried a low drop/heavy gap help scheme on SGA that would've had a lot of potential if the timberwolves had gotten more reps with it in the regular season. or when they went zone vs the thunder and played it horrifically

the one positive with Finch is that he seemed to have figured out something with the offense down the stretch of the season. started running a lot more off-ball actions and got a lot of the role players going. he also ran a lot more off-ball for Ant the whole year

the problem is that with Ant's inconsistency issues the offense often has to lean on the role players. Finch did develop the non-Ant aspects of the offense, but i don't think that kind of offense is resilient against great defenses

which means we need to try and be a defensive-leaning team, so when Ant has one of his off games we can lean on the defense to carry us

the thing is, our roster is constructed beautifully if our objective is to be defensive-oriented. we have amazing personnel on that end. we just have a dumb coach

people can say 'he led us to back-to-back west finals!'

like, are we really saying that **** when the warriors had no Steph? judging by how close the games were they likely would've beat us with Steph. and that's not to mention that the lakers should've been up 3-1 on us, but we got bailed out by Luka being sick game 3 and then Ant having a ridiculous anomaly of a performance and us having an anomaly of an offensive rebounding performance in game 4 to barely give us the win. lakers thoroughly outplayed us in games 2/3/4; they were getting open shot after open shot at will on us, while we had no idea what to do with their defense. the lakers deserved to be up 3-1

the trip to the west finals this year is really misleading. we got significantly outplayed in both series on the way there. the reality is that we're probably the 7th best team in the west. teams better than us:

-thunder (duh)

-rockets took the warriors to 7 with Steph. based on our result without Steph we would've probably only taken them to 5/6

-lakers outplayed us

-nuggets put up a way better fight vs the thunder than we did

-clippers played the nuggets even

-warriors would've beat us with Steph. series was too close without him

what's frustrating is that if we lose in the first or second round Finch likely gets axed, and almost certainly if it had been the first round. but unfortunately people fixate way too much on results and so 'conference finals trip' holds major weight even though we were significantly outplayed in both series on the way there and only made it because of two huge lucky breaks

[BlacJacMac]

Decent presser by Finch. He sounds like it was a very rough season overall.

Talks about Ant maybe needing to get in on the whole foul grifting thing.

Talks about what growth he's seen in Dilly and what he needs to work on. Seems more positive about his future than I thought he'd be.

Talks about maybe taking away some of the offensive freedom and installing some more structure.

Watch on YouTube

;ab_channel=MinnesotaTimberwolves

[Slim Tubby]

i think we should fire Finch. it feels like he's made pretty much every philosophical defensive error you can possibly make:

-insists on constant extreme ball pressure to the point where we're going over screens 40 feet out and giving up blow-bys regularly despite being loaded with great perimeter on-ball defenders

the thing about this ball pressure too is that it isn't the funneling kind of ball pressure. you'd do that if you had bad on-ball defenders. then the philosophy would be 'well, we're going to give up blow-bys anyway, so we may as well ball pressure and funnel them into Rudy.' the ball pressure Finch runs is more like 'we're going to ball pressure AND try to stop you too.' if you have the on-ball defenders the timberwolves have that can be a great strategy against teams that don't have great perimeter creators. it's why it worked so well against denver last year. but against great creators who can score and playmake against that ball pressure it's negative opportunity cost. the detriment of blow-bys and more fouling easily outweighs the positive of eating up shot clock and delaying actions

in games 3 & 4 vs the thunder we actually relented from the ball pressure for once and it's the main reason our defense was so good in game 3. in game 4 our defense wasn't very good and Finch overreacts and goes right back to the ball pressure for game 5

-continually runs a peel switch scheme against p&r. the scheme worked great the first ~1/3rd of the season when we actually ran it properly where:

if screen navigator manages to stay with ball-handler, run a standard drop

if screen navigator falls too far behind, run a peel switch with Rudy taking the ball-handler and the screen navigator taking the screener

but then we fell into just peel switching it virtually every time. it's clearly supposed to be a peel switch scheme and not a standard switch because the screen navigator still tries to screen navigate. but we fell into peel switching it every time and never corrected the issue for some reason. in addition to leading to mismatches it takes Rudy away from the rim. Luka & SGA ate our coverage alive in the playoffs

-switches Naz onto perimeter players instead of hedging. Naz was phenomenal in the hedge when we ran it all the time 2/3 years ago. but now we just switch him onto guys all the time and he gets invariably burned

-doesn't play Rudy enough in the playoffs. but of course, Finch is always having Rudy switch out onto the perimeter now, taking away from his rim protection and rebounding, so when Finch is coming to the conclusion of 'i don't think Rudy's defense/rebounding are enough to make up for his lack of offense right now' it's not really true because if he were utilized right defensively then his defense/rebounding WOULD be enough

-constantly has Jaden guarding poa

Jaden admittedly improved his screen navigation significantly this year after it had been a major issue before, turning himself into a great poa defender. what's frustrating is that when Jaden was a poor screen navigator last year we ran low drop all the time, but now that he's a good screen navigator we run the peel switch all the time and take Jaden's improved poa D out of the equation, which appears to have eaten away at his screen navigation

before Jaden's improvement as a poa defender the decision to put him there was even more nonsensical than it is now, but now my main issue with the decision is that Jaden is hardly ever in off-ball/rim protection roles anymore where he's amazing. Jaden's off-ball D has massively declined as a result, i'd literally call him poor in that area now, because he doesn't get the reps

what's particularly baffling about Finch's decision to have Jaden guard poa is that we have three great poa defenders on the team besides Jaden. Ant (if you limited the length of the stints), NAW, and Jaylen Clark. it's the perfect team to have Jaden be off the ball defensively, but Finch hardly ever does it. the only guy who gets poa duties over Jaden when they're on the floor together is Jaylen Clark

-overprioritizes the defensive glass. the number of open shots we give up off of offensive rebounds is ridiculous. replacing KAT with Randle along with Rudy's rebounding dropoff this year admittedly drops the team's rebounding to a concerning level, so i understand putting more focus on the defensive glass to a degree, but there's way too many instances where the timberwolves have a man advantage around the basket and STILL send someone else in to crash the glass. another detriment of this is that it torpedoes the timberwolves' potential for transition offense

and Finch's other defensive philosophies also happen to hurt the team's defensive rebounding. the constant switching leading to Rudy on the perimeter and a smaller player on the opposing team's center, as well as not playing Rudy enough, which means Naz instead who's a terrible rebounder

-doesn't implement enough help schemes in the regular season

earlier in the season the timberwolves were running a lot of high drop, presumably as an adjustment to Luka killing their low drop in the west finals last year. the high drop features Rudy totally committing to the ball-handler in p&r with the poa defender still chasing from behind, while a low man takes Rudy's man. this was a very effective scheme early in the season, but we stopped running it

in fact, by about halfway through the season we'd largely stopped hedging, stopped providing gap help, and stopped rotating to the rim on drives unless the on-ball defender had been completely taken out of the play. and, of course, we hardly ever doubled anyone, no matter how hot they got, a Finch trademark

what happened i believe is that Finch misdiagnosed what was wrong with our defense. he did correctly recognize that we were in rotation way too much, but he ostensibly thought the main reason for that was that we were playing too much help D. while there was some overhelping at times i think the ball-pressure leading to blow-bys was a far bigger issue

the lack of help schemes from the timberwolves the second half of the season led to them being rusty with help schemes when they inevitably had to turn to them in the playoffs. for instance when they tried a low drop/heavy gap help scheme on SGA that would've had a lot of potential if the timberwolves had gotten more reps with it in the regular season. or when they went zone vs the thunder and played it horrifically

the one positive with Finch is that he seemed to have figured out something with the offense down the stretch of the season. started running a lot more off-ball actions and got a lot of the role players going. he also ran a lot more off-ball for Ant the whole year

the problem is that with Ant's inconsistency issues the offense often has to lean on the role players. Finch did develop the non-Ant aspects of the offense, but i don't think that kind of offense is resilient against great defenses

which means we need to try and be a defensive-leaning team, so when Ant has one of his off games we can lean on the defense to carry us

the thing is, our roster is constructed beautifully if our objective is to be defensive-oriented. we have amazing personnel on that end. we just have a dumb coach

people can say 'he led us to back-to-back west finals!'

like, are we really saying that **** when the warriors had no Steph? judging by how close the games were they likely would've beat us with Steph. and that's not to mention that the lakers should've been up 3-1 on us, but we got bailed out by Luka being sick game 3 and then Ant having a ridiculous anomaly of a performance and us having an anomaly of an offensive rebounding performance in game 4 to barely give us the win. lakers thoroughly outplayed us in games 2/3/4; they were getting open shot after open shot at will on us, while we had no idea what to do with their defense. the lakers deserved to be up 3-1

the trip to the west finals this year is really misleading. we got significantly outplayed in both series on the way there. the reality is that we're probably the 7th best team in the west. teams better than us:

-thunder (duh)

-rockets took the warriors to 7 with Steph. based on our result without Steph we would've probably only taken them to 5/6

-lakers outplayed us

-nuggets put up a way better fight vs the thunder than we did

-clippers played the nuggets even

-warriors would've beat us with Steph. series was too close without him

what's frustrating is that if we lose in the first or second round Finch likely gets axed, and almost certainly if it had been the first round. but unfortunately people fixate way too much on results and so 'conference finals trip' holds major weight even though we were significantly outplayed in both series on the way there and only made it because of two huge lucky breaks

Nope.

That is all.

Sent from my N152DL using RealGM mobile app

[Klomp]

Talks about what growth he's seen in Dilly and what he needs to work on. Seems more positive about his future than I thought he'd be.

This is where I get a bit annoyed when I see Finch compared by fans to guys like Thibs when it comes to playing young guys. He is definitely not anti-youth.

[BlacJacMac]

Talks about what growth he's seen in Dilly and what he needs to work on. Seems more positive about his future than I thought he'd be.

This is where I get a bit annoyed when I see Finch compared by fans to guys like Thibs when it comes to playing young guys. He is definitely not anti-youth.

I think Finch is very stubborn, but that's where my comparison of him to Thibs starts and stops.

[FrenchMinnyFan]

I'm all for running it again with Finchy. He is annoying at times but do a tremendous job with this group.

[Loaf_of_bread]

LOL do you ever have a good take?

Give me an example

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. ???

[Guest84]

First, I tip my cap to Finch. Does he frustrate me at times in game…yes. However, he’s done a great job with the talent or lack thereof since he’s been here. Multiple playoff appearances and back to back conference finals.

This for a team that nobody expected to be there at the start of the season. Finch has his flaws but he was also given a weirdly constructed roster with low iq guys but made it work.

This roster wasn’t considered a contender until after Finch took a group of misfits to the wcf.

To me, this team was built to beat Denver cause they were considered the cream of the crop. They were not built to beat okc. This is where Tim messed up as he should’ve constructed the team to be versatile enough to beat any team.

While idk if Finch is the coach to take the team to the promise land, I also don’t know if I’m ready to fire him. This team isn’t yet constructed to win a championship. Even though I do feel like they could’ve if they played smarter.

Finch definitely needs to improve his in game management and adjustments. He also needs to reduce the offensive freedom if their iq isn’t high enough to read, react and anticipate the opponents moves. He also needs to improve his rotations and play the youth. In game experience is too valuable to keep the young guys on the bench all year.

If I’m not mistaken, he also signed an extension recently. So I don’t foresee him being fired any time soon. Unless next year is just an absolute dumpster fire.

I personally think we lost more so due to poor roster construction and low iq players than Finch. Although that doesn’t mean he doesn’t share the blame.

[TimberKat]

This thread is done since we now have the new head coach thread

[minimus]

i think we should fire Finch. it feels like he's made pretty much every philosophical defensive error you can possibly make

Mate, while I don’t necessarily agree with all your points, I really hope you keep posting on this board. Between all the low-effort, whining-type posts, your writing brings a lot of real basketball knowledge and perspective. I won’t reply to your post right now because I don’t want to fire off any reactionary thoughts — I’ve bookmarked your points and will take the time to reflect and do my homework.

Once again, thank you!

[Greenbolt90]

Give me an example

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

[Greenbolt90]

i think we should fire Finch. it feels like he's made pretty much every philosophical defensive error you can possibly make

Mate, while I don’t necessarily agree with all your points, I really hope you keep posting on this board. Between all the low-effort, whining-type posts, your writing brings a lot of real basketball knowledge and perspective. I won’t reply to your post right now because I don’t want to fire off any reactionary thoughts — I’ve bookmarked your points and will take the time to reflect and do my homework.

Once again, thank you!

thanks. i don't usually come here because people don't really engage with my points, but i post 'player grades' right after summer league and at the midway point of the season. other than that i might pop in once in a blue moon

[KGdaBom]

i think we should fire Finch. it feels like he's made pretty much every philosophical defensive error you can possibly make:

-insists on constant extreme ball pressure to the point where we're going over screens 40 feet out and giving up blow-bys regularly despite being loaded with great perimeter on-ball defenders

the thing about this ball pressure too is that it isn't the funneling kind of ball pressure. you'd do that if you had bad on-ball defenders. then the philosophy would be 'well, we're going to give up blow-bys anyway, so we may as well ball pressure and funnel them into Rudy.' the ball pressure Finch runs is more like 'we're going to ball pressure AND try to stop you too.' if you have the on-ball defenders the timberwolves have that can be a great strategy against teams that don't have great perimeter creators. it's why it worked so well against denver last year. but against great creators who can score and playmake against that ball pressure it's negative opportunity cost. the detriment of blow-bys and more fouling easily outweighs the positive of eating up shot clock and delaying actions

in games 3 & 4 vs the thunder we actually relented from the ball pressure for once and it's the main reason our defense was so good in game 3. in game 4 our defense wasn't very good and Finch overreacts and goes right back to the ball pressure for game 5

-continually runs a peel switch scheme against p&r. the scheme worked great the first ~1/3rd of the season when we actually ran it properly where:

if screen navigator manages to stay with ball-handler, run a standard drop

if screen navigator falls too far behind, run a peel switch with Rudy taking the ball-handler and the screen navigator taking the screener

but then we fell into just peel switching it virtually every time. it's clearly supposed to be a peel switch scheme and not a standard switch because the screen navigator still tries to screen navigate. but we fell into peel switching it every time and never corrected the issue for some reason. in addition to leading to mismatches it takes Rudy away from the rim. Luka & SGA ate our coverage alive in the playoffs

-switches Naz onto perimeter players instead of hedging. Naz was phenomenal in the hedge when we ran it all the time 2/3 years ago. but now we just switch him onto guys all the time and he gets invariably burned

-doesn't play Rudy enough in the playoffs. but of course, Finch is always having Rudy switch out onto the perimeter now, taking away from his rim protection and rebounding, so when Finch is coming to the conclusion of 'i don't think Rudy's defense/rebounding are enough to make up for his lack of offense right now' it's not really true because if he were utilized right defensively then his defense/rebounding WOULD be enough

-constantly has Jaden guarding poa

Jaden admittedly improved his screen navigation significantly this year after it had been a major issue before, turning himself into a great poa defender. what's frustrating is that when Jaden was a poor screen navigator last year we ran low drop all the time, but now that he's a good screen navigator we run the peel switch all the time and take Jaden's improved poa D out of the equation, which appears to have eaten away at his screen navigation

before Jaden's improvement as a poa defender the decision to put him there was even more nonsensical than it is now, but now my main issue with the decision is that Jaden is hardly ever in off-ball/rim protection roles anymore where he's amazing. Jaden's off-ball D has massively declined as a result, i'd literally call him poor in that area now, because he doesn't get the reps

what's particularly baffling about Finch's decision to have Jaden guard poa is that we have three great poa defenders on the team besides Jaden. Ant (if you limited the length of the stints), NAW, and Jaylen Clark. it's the perfect team to have Jaden be off the ball defensively, but Finch hardly ever does it. the only guy who gets poa duties over Jaden when they're on the floor together is Jaylen Clark

-overprioritizes the defensive glass. the number of open shots we give up off of offensive rebounds is ridiculous. replacing KAT with Randle along with Rudy's rebounding dropoff this year admittedly drops the team's rebounding to a concerning level, so i understand putting more focus on the defensive glass to a degree, but there's way too many instances where the timberwolves have a man advantage around the basket and STILL send someone else in to crash the glass. another detriment of this is that it torpedoes the timberwolves' potential for transition offense

and Finch's other defensive philosophies also happen to hurt the team's defensive rebounding. the constant switching leading to Rudy on the perimeter and a smaller player on the opposing team's center, as well as not playing Rudy enough, which means Naz instead who's a terrible rebounder

-doesn't implement enough help schemes in the regular season

earlier in the season the timberwolves were running a lot of high drop, presumably as an adjustment to Luka killing their low drop in the west finals last year. the high drop features Rudy totally committing to the ball-handler in p&r with the poa defender still chasing from behind, while a low man takes Rudy's man. this was a very effective scheme early in the season, but we stopped running it

in fact, by about halfway through the season we'd largely stopped hedging, stopped providing gap help, and stopped rotating to the rim on drives unless the on-ball defender had been completely taken out of the play. and, of course, we hardly ever doubled anyone, no matter how hot they got, a Finch trademark

what happened i believe is that Finch misdiagnosed what was wrong with our defense. he did correctly recognize that we were in rotation way too much, but he ostensibly thought the main reason for that was that we were playing too much help D. while there was some overhelping at times i think the ball-pressure leading to blow-bys was a far bigger issue

the lack of help schemes from the timberwolves the second half of the season led to them being rusty with help schemes when they inevitably had to turn to them in the playoffs. for instance when they tried a low drop/heavy gap help scheme on SGA that would've had a lot of potential if the timberwolves had gotten more reps with it in the regular season. or when they went zone vs the thunder and played it horrifically

the one positive with Finch is that he seemed to have figured out something with the offense down the stretch of the season. started running a lot more off-ball actions and got a lot of the role players going. he also ran a lot more off-ball for Ant the whole year

the problem is that with Ant's inconsistency issues the offense often has to lean on the role players. Finch did develop the non-Ant aspects of the offense, but i don't think that kind of offense is resilient against great defenses

which means we need to try and be a defensive-leaning team, so when Ant has one of his off games we can lean on the defense to carry us

the thing is, our roster is constructed beautifully if our objective is to be defensive-oriented. we have amazing personnel on that end. we just have a dumb coach

people can say 'he led us to back-to-back west finals!'

like, are we really saying that **** when the warriors had no Steph? judging by how close the games were they likely would've beat us with Steph. and that's not to mention that the lakers should've been up 3-1 on us, but we got bailed out by Luka being sick game 3 and then Ant having a ridiculous anomaly of a performance and us having an anomaly of an offensive rebounding performance in game 4 to barely give us the win. lakers thoroughly outplayed us in games 2/3/4; they were getting open shot after open shot at will on us, while we had no idea what to do with their defense. the lakers deserved to be up 3-1

the trip to the west finals this year is really misleading. we got significantly outplayed in both series on the way there. the reality is that we're probably the 7th best team in the west. teams better than us:

-thunder (duh)

-rockets took the warriors to 7 with Steph. based on our result without Steph we would've probably only taken them to 5/6

-lakers outplayed us

-nuggets put up a way better fight vs the thunder than we did

-clippers played the nuggets even

-warriors would've beat us with Steph. series was too close without him

what's frustrating is that if we lose in the first or second round Finch likely gets axed, and almost certainly if it had been the first round. but unfortunately people fixate way too much on results and so 'conference finals trip' holds major weight even though we were significantly outplayed in both series on the way there and only made it because of two huge lucky breaks

Trying to appear wise using many words.

[Worm Guts]

what's frustrating is that if we lose in the first or second round Finch likely gets axed, and almost certainly if it had been the first round. but unfortunately people fixate way too much on results and so 'conference finals trip' holds major weight even though we were significantly outplayed in both series on the way there and only made it because of two huge lucky breaks

We didn't get outplayed in either series. We benefitted from some injury luck against Golden State, but we beat them 4 straight without Curry and only one of them was close. Maybe the series is different if Curry plays, but it wasn't close when he didn't. I can't tell if you're such a Wolves fan that it creates unreasonable expectations for their level of play or if your just trolling.

[Greenbolt90]

what's frustrating is that if we lose in the first or second round Finch likely gets axed, and almost certainly if it had been the first round. but unfortunately people fixate way too much on results and so 'conference finals trip' holds major weight even though we were significantly outplayed in both series on the way there and only made it because of two huge lucky breaks

We didn't get outplayed in either series. We benefitted from some injury luck against Golden State, but we beat them 4 straight without Curry and only one of them was close. Maybe the series is different if Curry plays, but it wasn't close when he didn't. I can't tell if you're such a Wolves fan that it creates unreasonable expectations for their level of play or if your just trolling.

so the warriors won a game

then our wins were by 5, 7, 11, and 24

what are you talking about saying one game was close, lol. the warriors literally won a game basically without Steph and then made two more close and one somewhat close

Steph easily makes up those single digit margins, if not the 11 point margin as well. warriors would've very very likely been up 3-2 with Steph, and maybe would've just won in 5

[Worm Guts]

what's frustrating is that if we lose in the first or second round Finch likely gets axed, and almost certainly if it had been the first round. but unfortunately people fixate way too much on results and so 'conference finals trip' holds major weight even though we were significantly outplayed in both series on the way there and only made it because of two huge lucky breaks

We didn't get outplayed in either series. We benefitted from some injury luck against Golden State, but we beat them 4 straight without Curry and only one of them was close. Maybe the series is different if Curry plays, but it wasn't close when he didn't. I can't tell if you're such a Wolves fan that it creates unreasonable expectations for their level of play or if your just trolling.

so the warriors won a game

then our wins were by 5, 7, 11, and 24

what are you talking about saying one game was close, lol. the warriors literally won a game basically without Steph and then made two more close and one somewhat close

Steph easily makes up those single digit margins, if not the 11 point margin as well. warriors would've very very likely been up 3-2 with Steph, and maybe would've just won in 5

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.

[Greenbolt90]

We didn't get outplayed in either series. We benefitted from some injury luck against Golden State, but we beat them 4 straight without Curry and only one of them was close. Maybe the series is different if Curry plays, but it wasn't close when he didn't. I can't tell if you're such a Wolves fan that it creates unreasonable expectations for their level of play or if your just trolling.

so the warriors won a game

then our wins were by 5, 7, 11, and 24

what are you talking about saying one game was close, lol. the warriors literally won a game basically without Steph and then made two more close and one somewhat close

Steph easily makes up those single digit margins, if not the 11 point margin as well. warriors would've very very likely been up 3-2 with Steph, and maybe would've just won in 5

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

[Worm Guts]

so the warriors won a game

then our wins were by 5, 7, 11, and 24

what are you talking about saying one game was close, lol. the warriors literally won a game basically without Steph and then made two more close and one somewhat close

Steph easily makes up those single digit margins, if not the 11 point margin as well. warriors would've very very likely been up 3-2 with Steph, and maybe would've just won in 5

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.