The Timberwolves entered halftime of Game 7 on Sunday in Denver down 15 points after playing what Karl-Anthony Towns referred to as “park basketball.”
Not competitive.
Minnesota was getting worked on the glass, wasn’t imposing its will defensively and wasn’t playing with any kind of plan on offense.
All of it bugged Wolves coach Chris Finch, but the latter irked him most of all.
“We were getting crushed. They had 14 second-chance points. That was where our defense was letting us down the most — 14 second-chance points in the first half; we had to get a handle on that more than anything,” Finch said. “But I was really pissed about the offense. I thought the offense degenerated completely, for no real reason. So we addressed both those things.”
Indeed they did. The Wolves outrebounded Denver 29-15 over the final two quarters. They suffocated the Nuggets’ offense while scoring 60 points of their own in the second half, roaring back from a 20-point deficit to reach the NBA’s Western Conference Finals, which start Wednesday night at Target Center against the Dallas Mavericks.
Whatever was said at halftime certainly did the job. So what exactly does a ticked-off head coach look like?
Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch argues for a call during the second half of Game 5 of the team’s NBA basketball second-round playoff series against the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Denver (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
“Pissed?” Finch asked.
Yes.
“Pissed,” Finch answered.
Can you please elaborate?
“A lot of F bombs,” Finch said. “A lot of right to the point. A lot of anger.”
“He looks like an angry old man yelling and slamming his crutches down,” Wolves guard Mike Conley described with a smile. “You would love to see it.”
Wolves assistant coach Micah Nori noted there are two different types of ticked off. One is coming in and tossing things around and making a scene. Worse, though, he said, is when your dad or another authority figure expresses their disappointment in your actions.
“That is worse than being in trouble,” Nori said. “He’s done it where he’s like, ‘I’m not going to come in here and yell and scream and break (stuff), it’s just you guys are doing a disservice to yourselves.’ ”
Nori noted marching in and screaming often just compounds issues. Players want solutions. Any anger, Wolves assistant coach Elston Turner said, has to also be “correctional.”
“You’ve got to have a message in our pissedness,” Turner said.
Finch said he was more outwardly upset when reviewing the film with the coaching staff. By the time the coaches went in to speak with the players, it was less of a tantrum and more of an agitated message — or a healthy balance between the two.
“It was just more like, ‘We’ve got to get our head out of our (butts), make the simple play,’” Finch recalled. “We watched clips, and I was angrily narrating the clips.”
“It was more like, ‘I know we going to win this game, we’ve just got to do this to win the game,’ ” star guard Anthony Edwards said. “He wasn’t really mad. It was just like his clips on the screen were, ‘This is what we’ve got to do to win this game. And if we do it, we’ll win. And if we don’t, we’ll lose.’ ”
Frankly, Finch was annoyed. The Timberwolves had done so much good in Game 6, which led to a 45-point blowout victory.
Turner made sure to give the Nuggets credit for their first-half effort — “It wasn’t just us. They were playing well on both ends. … They were all over the place.” — but the Timberwolves clearly weren’t sharp.
There was no decision or aggression. The corrections made between Game 5 and Game 6 were nowhere to be found.
Nori said Finch reminded players they had talked about being the more physical, harder-playing team. They had talked about getting into Jamal Murray. They had talked about doing the same things well over and over again on offense.
And none of it showed up over the first 24 minutes of play.
“I wanted us to pick up our play, pick up everything,” Finch said. “But yeah, I was angry. I said, ‘This is a major regression.’ ”
Even as he was describing it after the game, the emotions came flooding back. His voice loudened.
“We just went through this!” he recalled. “What are we doing?””
“So you’re loud, you’re firm,” Turner said. “Especially with stuff that you’ve already covered. If you’re blowing something that you’ve already covered — in Game 7 — there should be no mistakes.”
Dad was disappointed, and his kids felt it.
“We respond to anything Finchy says,” Conley said. “But you know he wants it so much that it just kind of gets your attention a little more than normal.”
Turner could tell the message was sinking in. There was feedback in the forms of head nods.
“Like, ‘Yeah, yeah, you right,’ ” Turner said. “But there’s still a time when you’ve got to do it — from the film to the practice court to out there in front of the fans. Most of our guys, this is the first time in a Game 7, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but I’m proud of them.”
Because they answered the bell. Nori thinks the “heightened awareness” of the stage likely increased the team’s response to the message.
“Fear is a helluva motivator — and I’m not saying we were scared of them, I’m saying fear of your season being over. Fear of just not performing and going out the way that you would want to,” Nori said. “I think it was a reality check of, ‘You know what, he’s absolutely right. We’re not doing this. And we’ve got to do these things in order to win the game.’ I think the big thing that helped was it was Game 7. … We knew what gave us success, and just trying to repeat that. Especially being the best version of ourselves for 24 minutes. In my opinion, that’s kind of what he was telling them.”
Message received, as it so often is with Finch and his staff. Much of it stems from the delivery. Nori noted Finch treats the players like “grown men.” There’s evident respect. There’s also accountability, for everyone. Edwards noted as much in his postgame press conference.
“He don’t sugarcoat anything. If KAT (messing) up, he going to get on KAT. If I’m (messing) up, he going to get on me. If Rudy (messing) up, he going to get on anybody that’s messing up throughout the game, and I think that’s what makes him the best coach in the NBA, to me,” Edwards said. “Because, no matter who it is, no matter how high up on the pole, he’s going to get on you from start to finish.”
Nori noted Finch at times may hold players to higher standards than they hold themselves. That’s required, he said. Because if you don’t put players on film, you won’t see progress. But the bad is well balanced with the good. The coach is just as quick to praise as he is to criticize.
“He does a very good job of that, so that he can get on ‘em. And then, after the course of 93 games this year and being there for three years, his voice never gets old,” Nori said. “Because it’s not like it’s just ranting and raving.”
And there’s never an intent to embarrass anyone.
“It’s merely just for the team, and you have to be better for us to be better. And that’s why he tells the guys and it’s why they appreciate his coaching, and then they’re cool with it. It doesn’t linger,” Nori said. “It’s like, ‘Here’s what we talked about doing, here’s what you’re not doing, we need you to do what we talked about, and do it with more effort and execute it to the best of your ability.’”
Simply: Go out and do better.
“He has a good message behind everything,” Conley said. “The message (Sunday) was, ‘Make the small plays, and that’ll win us the game.’
The Timberwolves carried out the marching orders to perfection.
“It starts with the head of the snake, and (Finch is) the head of our snake,” Edwards said. “We all look up to him, listen to him, and he do a great job of making sure we’re ready to go every night.”
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