Timberwolves assistant coach Micah Nori spent this week both installing a game plan to face the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals and serving as the face of an organization.
Shortly after practices ended, Nori made his way over to field questions from the local media ranging from ways to stop Nikola Jokic to what the potential seating setup could be for head coach Chris Finch.
Apples and oranges. Which, frankly, isn’t all that rare of a spectrum when facing questions from a sea of reporters. From there, Nori has had to handle a number of local and national radio interviews.
Finch is heavily involved this week, even while having surgery to repair his ruptured patellar tendon, but Nori has had to take on a number of the head coach’s duties ahead of the franchise’s biggest playoff series in 20 years.
It’s good practice for what’s potentially coming down the line. Nori will be the one patrolling the Timberwolves’ sidelines for Game 1 in Denver on Saturday night, while Finch observes the game from a seated position in an undetermined location somewhere inside Ball Arena.
And, who knows, perhaps as soon as a few months from now, Nori will patrol someone else’s sidelines. While he’s Minnesota’s de facto in-game head man for the time being, Minnesota contends that Nori should be a full-time head coach somewhere in the Association.
“Micah is gonna make a great head coach when some smart team hires him,” Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said.
Currently, fans most recognize Nori as the guy who gives the insightful halftime television answers on the local broadcast, delivered through the witty use of wild analogies. And Nori is as funny off camera as he is in front of it.
“Micah is probably one of the funniest people I’ve been around,” Timberwolves assistant coach Joe Boylan said in October. “I’m going to be calling Micah for the rest of my life when I need a laugh.”
But don’t let the coach’s humor distract you from his acumen.
He is the game-execution guru. That’s why Finch – who’s close friends with Nori – brought him onto the staff in his first offseason on the job. Nori masters mapping out rotations. He knows when to use timeouts before you lose them and also has a strong sense for the offensive side of the ball.
When Finch went down with a couple minutes to play in Phoenix, Nori handled the late-game substitutions and timeouts with precision to lead the Wolves over the finish line, with a little assistance from Anthony Edwards.
“I knew Micah was really, really good with the small pieces of the game,” Finch said in October. “These are things that, to me, I needed covering.”
The Timberwolves perfectly defended a late-game inbounds pass against Golden State in late March, as Kyle Anderson was in perfect position to contest a Klay Thompson catch-and-shoot triple that could’ve knotted the game, but instead clanked off iron. After the play, Rudy Gobert pointed toward the bench.
Nori had told the Wolves exactly what the Warriors would run ahead of time.
“Micah’s a genius,” Edwards said after the game.
“He’s really smart,” Gobert said this week. “So he’s able to make the adjustment that we will need to make or that we’re going to need to make if Finchy is not completely there (Saturday).”
That all reeks of an NBA head coach, as Connelly suggested. The inference made Nori smile.
“I think Tim is probably the smartest person we all know in the building, so if he’s saying it…,” Nori joked. “But, at the end of the day – and I mean this in all sincerity – I’m not trying to downplay anything, but I’ve been very, very lucky. To be in this league for 26 years and not have to look for a job, in all honesty. I’ve been able to go, and to be around all of this.”
He and Finch are two peas in a pod who are completely aligned and work in perfect unison. Nothing about that work marriage would ever require a divorce.
“He’s an energetic guy. He’s funny, witty. He’s got a lot to him, and you know, I’m not saying Finchy isn’t funny and all that stuff, but Finchy can seem a little more serious than Micah,” Mike Conley said. “And it’s good to have that kind of balance, and guys really respect Micah and what he brings out in our team and everything he has done for us, and all the work that he does just not showing up off the court.”
But sure, Nori would certainly like a chance to run his own team someday. The difference between his job now and a potential head coaching gig, Nori noted, is you have to run your own program. You have to call your own timeouts, draw your own plays and make the final calls on any coaching decisions.
Finch doesn’t think that’d be an issue. He said in October that Nori has “head coaching sensibilities.”
“He definitely has the overall approach and mentality to connect with a lot of parts of an organization,” Finch said.
Connelly – who also worked with Nori for three years in Denver – concurs.
“He’s got a really high emotional IQ. He’s got the humility, natural connection with players and he’s just seen it all,” Connelly said. “You look at Micah’s career and you grind forever as an advanced scout, it’s one of the more difficult jobs in the NBA. Certainly you know every play imaginable. So you combine all those things, I’m certain he’s going to be a great head coach.”
And, frankly, the Timberwolves’ success in this series with Nori patrolling the sidelines would probably go a long way in those efforts. There have been recent examples of assistant coaches filling in serving as a springboard to a full-time opportunity. Both Luke Walton and Mike Brown stepped in for Steve Kerr, had success guiding the Golden State Warriors and eventually got their own jobs. Brown has since turned the Sacramento Kings’ organization around.
Perhaps that could be in Nori’s future. But he’s not thinking even slightly about such a possibility at the moment. He wants to help Minnesota win – both for the organization, and his dear friend who, in Nori’s eyes, was the NBA Coach of the Year.
“I’m not worried, because the way Finchy does stuff and all this, we pretty much think the same way. I essentially just don’t want to be the reason for a win or a loss, at the end of the day. I want to make sure that it’s not that clunky thing that’s going on where it becomes a distraction for the players and that type of thing. That’s my biggest worry,” Nori told Chad Hartman on Wednesday on WCCO Radio. “We know Denver in and out. We know what they’re going to do. They know what we’re going to do. We know how we want to attack them.
“Finchy does a great job of preparing us. He’s pretty much given us 96 percent of it all. So it’s just that four percent that he would normally take care of in game, for sure, that may or may not end up with me. What I lose sleep over is making sure that I’m not the reason that something goes awry.”
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