[Chris Hine] The Timberwolves needed a year to fashion an elite NBA defense. How did it happen? Chris Finch, assistant Elston Turner and center Rudy Gobert have built one of the league’s top-ranked defenses. On the evolution of the “biggie smalls” and how they learned from last year’s mistakes:

[Awesome article!](https://www.startribune.com/timberwolves-nba-top-defense-rudy-gobert-jaden-mcdaniels-chris-finch/600322291/?refresh=true) Looks like Gobert played a big part in masterminding the defense with Finch and Turner.

Some excerpts:

>Finch said that during his time as an assistant in New Orleans, he realized that a team should collaborate with its best defensive player the way it might with its best offensive player. He has applied that philosophy in having Gobert play a significant role in outlining the themes of the Wolves defense.
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>Entering last season, the Wolves tried to play two different ways on defense depending on whether Gobert was on the floor. If he was, they would employ “drop” coverage, which is what Gobert excelled at in Utah. When he wasn’t on the floor, the Wolves tried to play a more “high-wall,” a scramble-around-and-rotate style of play that was a success for them two years ago in reaching the playoffs. The Wolves were never quite able to pull that off to Finch’s liking. It was confusing for everyone to adjust back and forth in their responsibilities.
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>The Wolves weren’t going to come into this year playing straight, conservative drop coverage. In essence, they were going to **mix philosophies.** They would be more aggressive in guarding the perimeter. But that style meant their bigger players such as Gobert, Towns and Reid would have to be more active in rotations, something many teams avoid with their tall guys. The Wolves embraced this. “With our size, we do have two big bodies that are normally not accustomed to moving around, flying around the perimeter,” Turner said. “That is one of the things we’ve worked on and continue to work on. … **They’re big smalls. ‘Biggie smalls’ is what I call them.”**
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>The Wolves were asking Gobert to move around the perimeter and do things he hasn’t always done, such as guarding from different spots on the floor and upping his pressure on the ball. This has helped “activate” players such as Edwards and McDaniels to do what they do best: playing on-ball defense. A lot of the credit for the Wolves’ defensive success also goes to Towns and Reid, who have both improved their ability to defend in the Wolves’ scheme “We realized that KAT and Naz are better on switches and playing in actions than we originally thought,” Finch said. “So instead of approaching it from the view of, ‘Oh my God, we got to stay out of this,’ they impressed us with their ability to learn how to do it and do it.”
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>Now the[ team is equally adept at defending from long range (opponents are shooting 32.7% from 25-29 feet, fifth lowest among NBA teams) and at the rim, where opponents are shooting 59.1%, fifth lowest in the league.](https://www.nba.com/stats/teams/opponent-shooting?dir=A&sort=Less%20Than%205%20ft.%20FG%20PCT)
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> “Last year, we tried to lean on a lot of things that didn’t necessarily suit our personnel,” Finch said. “So we asked Rudy coming into this season to be more open-minded about doing other things. … He’s been all in on it, and I think it’s made all the difference because it’s been a tone-setter.”

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by Slim-Ticket