Probably the second most important part of the Wolves org behind Ant.
TheCurseOfRandyBass
Good coach, not without warts.
JixieXue
FIINCHYYY
Finplayer_
I think he’s ok
He still gotta work on like some rotations
lyingcats
I mean the playoffs feels like something to be expected every season now thanks to him, love the guy.
MiloGoesToTheFatFarm
I want to see him solve the fourth quarter problems but that is definitely solvable. Overall pretty happy with him.
ineedcoffeealready
Good coach, glad we have him. Brought stability, intensity and accountability to the team.
woohzay
He’s been aight. Just needs to work on some things like calling appropriate timeouts and fixing the rotations
MisterBackShots69
Best coach we’ve had since Flip. Some potentially major issues however. Shows he is learning though. Hopefully he staunches future leads being blown, benches Nowell quicker, and is comfortable scheming more split lineups when KAT is back.
jonnylaw
Finch is a good coach.
He pushes the team to implement new concepts. It’s ugly sometimes but it is fun to watch the players develop. If he was willing to run out Nurse’s 7 man rotation and only play 1-2 defensive concepts and spam pick and roll, we would win more games. Then, they’d get obliterated in the playoffs.
Nxc06
He turned an absolute shit show that was the Rosas era into something actually looking like a good team almost immediately. For that alone I think he is better than many will give credit for.
suahoi
Overall, I think he’s a good coach with some major flaws – that may or may not be fixable. Even though he hasn’t been coaching in the NBA for a long time, he has been a professional basketball coach for most of his life – so I don’t think he’s suddenly going to become an effective game manager at this stage.
I think he is fairly rigid in his approach to basketball – he wants his team to play the beautiful game, with quick decisions, steady ball movement, active player movement, and a fast tempo.
That worked great 90% of last season, and has been great overall for player development. But we saw it falter in the playoffs as the screws tightened. I think a lot of that is because young players got tight – I don’t blame that on Finch, but at the same time, he wasn’t able to adapt to give them more structure when they needed it.
It hasn’t worked great this season with this roster, which was predictable. Rudy Gobert is essentially the antithesis of a free flowing offensive player.
I don’t have particularly high expectations for the remainder of this season, and I think we will enter next year with mostly the same roster, because we don’t have much flexibility to change anything. I think the team will disappoint again next year, and I think the front office will then then either trade KAT or fire Finch.
Jtc411
He does a lot of things well. He struggles in certain areas. I will say he’s only been an nba head coach for 2 years with significant roster change over 2 years. Much like a young player we gotta give him time to learn from his mistakes. My biggest concern is the inability at times to get the team to show effort and play hard. That’s the players letting their “finchy” down but he’s gotta find a way to light a fire or bench them.
KickerofTale
Better than Thibs and Ryan.
cawil65158
Let’s revisit all these positive comments in a few weeks when we blow another few big leads
PCFUTPLAYER
Good coach but very stubborn in his ways. Definitely has not had his scheme supported to the best by the front office. If he can get towns and gobert to work my opinion would be way higher
tulaero23
Best coach for 1st half…
MantusTMD
If we’re first round exit again this year, time to start shopping for a new coach
InnerKookaburra
Good coach who needs to keep improving, just like his players.
SubtleNoodle
It’s hard to tell really how good he is because he’s had to completely change the way the team plays both years, but despite that he’s had similar decent outcomes. It’s almost kind of strange how similar these two years have been.
Year 1: Major roster shake-up in the off-season. Started slow while implementing a new defensive scheme and getting guys to buy in. Eventually found themselves and over-performed to finish the season on a high note. Disappointing playoff outcome given how well they played.
Year 2: Major roster shake-up in the off season. Started slow while implementing new defensive (and offensive) schemes and getting guys to buy in. Recently found themselves and are performing well enough despite missing an All-NBA player.
That said, he and his staff have done very well developing young talent and he’s shown, at least a little, that he can adjust his schemes to his players successfully. I think he’s earned the chance to see what he can do with some stability. Maybe once they lock some stuff down they’ll stop blowing big leads in the 4th.
StraightGasoline
Boob
yourloudneighbor
I like him.
I also see frustration with him. Usually if his hairs a mess you can tell he’s telling himself “you can’t fix stupid”. This can be a very stupid team at times. And I don’t know if any coach can fix that.
TossingTurnips
Good coach who isn’t perfect (no coach is). Hes clearly still learning and has improved as a coach as much as the players have, which i think is pretty underrated. Coaches can and do get better as players do. I said it last year, and I’ll say it again, but a lot of the criticism as far as rotations, gameplan, game management, and etc are all vague and rarely do people bring any real, concrete evidence or suggestions of what he could have done differently.
I think hes on his way to becoming a very good to great coach. I hope he gets the chance to coach this team for a long time.
onken022
He showed a lot of warts in the playoffs last year, mainly regarding rotations and timeout usage, and frankly hasn’t shown much improvement this year. He’s a good coach but it seems like the team still lacks discipline and I’m not sure he’s the one who can bring that to them. We are still blowing big leads and the playing down to bad teams – he bears a lot of blame for that. I personally don’t see him as the long-term coach, especially now that we are in this “win now” mode after the Rudy trade.
jmcnea
Only been here two years and he’s already about to pass Thibs and Adelman for second winningest coach in franchise history.
Maximumlnsanity
Not a perfect coach but one we’ve desperately needed. Is a better coach than Thibs though
wsj1996
He is a good coach, but so stubborn. He needs to be able to be flexible in adjustments and expect the other team to also make adjustments. Big respect to him tho for keeping players accountable (IE benching Dlo in the 4th of the playoff game with Memphis)
Deep_Market5748
Not a perfect head coach but far from bad, overall I’d say he’s above average to good
SoupyWolfy
He’s the first coach that I have a reasonable level of confidence in other than Flip.
I remember having high expectations of Adelman and Thibs based off their previous success, but it was clear right away how outdated and rigid their schemes were and how they didn’t adapt to the roster we had. Finch had a lot of success last year, and now his team is way different as he had to adjust to no KAT, work in a traditional big like Rudy, and have a lot of new faces.
I think he’s done a reasonably good job working everyone in. He tends to ride the hot hand at the end of games if someone like Nowell is on fire or like when D’Lo didn’t close a game cause he was messing up too much. I like that as opposed to the rigid set substitutions I would see from a “good” coach like Thibs’.
His true test will be when KAT is back in action and trying to get the team to gel with him and Rudy together. If he can make that happen in time for the playoffs then I’ll be super impressed. However I also have reasonable expectations that he might not get that sorted out until next year.
Theonlyfudge
Great tits
aolzy
Best coach we’ve had in a loonnngggg time. Players seem to like him. Has flaws but seems to be improving.
Intelligent_Pain_174
I am surprised how many on here think that Finch is a good coach.
Players seem to like him but I am not sure what he has done to give people confidence.
He is nowhere near the top third of coaches in the NBA (I would probably put him near the bottom third). The Wolves seem to have lost a lot of games due to being outcoached. That shouldn’t happen often in the NBA. I can’t think of a game this season where the Wolves won due to outcoaching their opponent.
thiswasmy19thchoice
I think he doesn’t get nearly enough credit for scheme player development – especially considering how many young players we rely on, and core players constantly missing large chunks of time over the past 2 years between injuries and COVID.
Ant and Jaden have both developed ahead of schedule on his watch. A lot of coaches would be content for Ant to be a 1 dimensional scorer and Jaden a defensive role player, but they got Ant playing defense and looking to pass the ball, and Jaden getting more involved as a shot-take and maker. I remember a lot of people thinking the Jonathan Isaac comp was a long-shot and it being unlikely for Jaden to reach that level of defense.
Prince and SloMo have both done some of their best work under him and Vando blew up under him as well. His high wall scheme empowered both KAT and DLo to look decent defensively, which would’ve seemed impossible at one time.
People take the player-development for granted. There’s a lot of coaches that don’t have the patience for young player; they would just start Taurean and not even bother with it. With Finch, I feel good about guys like Moore and Minott. If they don’t play, I don’t feel like he’s burying them for no reason – I think he’s shown that he knows when a guy is ready to get out there.
beardybuddha
I’m a big Finchy guy, as I think he has a lot of what made me so fond of Flip as a coach.
I LOVED Flip. I still daydream about what he would’ve done in his second stint with the young pups. It sucks we were robbed of that.
Has it been perfect? No.
But I’ve had more fun watching the team during his tenure than I have in a very long time. Plus I really enjoy the relationship he’s built with Ant.
B+
Jypso
He’s a decent coach that has flaws.
He raised the floor for us but I’m thinking he has reached his ceiling.
I’ve seen him get outcoached by bad coaches. Giving up leads consistently, that’s a coaching problem. We are bad against losing teams. He needs to prepare us better than just say “we need to give better effort” after those losses.
I think this is the last year of Finch. The only argument to keep him around is money + Ant seems to like him.
I think Quinn is a target for ownership and the Hawks are trying to get him before we get in the race.
mildsar
Finch was advertised as motion offense coach. He overachieved last year with this scheme. TC brought here Gobert – a rim runner who needs pick-n-rolls. Without Towns Finch transformed last year offense around Gobert DHO, DLo scoring and Edwards ISOs and some pick-n-rolls. DLo went nuclear, Edwards has improved.
Now Finch has another challenge – transform our offense once again around Gobert-Edwards-Towns with Conley as facilitator. Quite a challenge.
I don’t know about you, guys, but I root for this guy, for this coach. He has his flaws, like any HC. But I will support him through everything.
Hooper53
I think he still makes some questionable decisions in terms of lineups, and timeouts but I feel like it’s getting better. I like that he’s the first to admit when he could have done something better, and I think that’s why he’s getting better as a coach.
38 Comments
Also did this last year so it’s gonna be pretty interesting how the perception on him changed
[https://www.reddit.com/r/timberwolves/comments/syxewh/chris_finch_became_head_coach_exactly_one_year/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf](https://www.reddit.com/r/timberwolves/comments/syxewh/chris_finch_became_head_coach_exactly_one_year/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Probably the second most important part of the Wolves org behind Ant.
Good coach, not without warts.
FIINCHYYY
I think he’s ok
He still gotta work on like some rotations
I mean the playoffs feels like something to be expected every season now thanks to him, love the guy.
I want to see him solve the fourth quarter problems but that is definitely solvable. Overall pretty happy with him.
Good coach, glad we have him. Brought stability, intensity and accountability to the team.
He’s been aight.
Just needs to work on some things like calling appropriate timeouts and fixing the rotations
Best coach we’ve had since Flip. Some potentially major issues however. Shows he is learning though. Hopefully he staunches future leads being blown, benches Nowell quicker, and is comfortable scheming more split lineups when KAT is back.
Finch is a good coach.
He pushes the team to implement new concepts. It’s ugly sometimes but it is fun to watch the players develop. If he was willing to run out Nurse’s 7 man rotation and only play 1-2 defensive concepts and spam pick and roll, we would win more games. Then, they’d get obliterated in the playoffs.
He turned an absolute shit show that was the Rosas era into something actually looking like a good team almost immediately. For that alone I think he is better than many will give credit for.
Overall, I think he’s a good coach with some major flaws – that may or may not be fixable. Even though he hasn’t been coaching in the NBA for a long time, he has been a professional basketball coach for most of his life – so I don’t think he’s suddenly going to become an effective game manager at this stage.
I think he is fairly rigid in his approach to basketball – he wants his team to play the beautiful game, with quick decisions, steady ball movement, active player movement, and a fast tempo.
That worked great 90% of last season, and has been great overall for player development. But we saw it falter in the playoffs as the screws tightened. I think a lot of that is because young players got tight – I don’t blame that on Finch, but at the same time, he wasn’t able to adapt to give them more structure when they needed it.
It hasn’t worked great this season with this roster, which was predictable. Rudy Gobert is essentially the antithesis of a free flowing offensive player.
I don’t have particularly high expectations for the remainder of this season, and I think we will enter next year with mostly the same roster, because we don’t have much flexibility to change anything. I think the team will disappoint again next year, and I think the front office will then then either trade KAT or fire Finch.
He does a lot of things well. He struggles in certain areas. I will say he’s only been an nba head coach for 2 years with significant roster change over 2 years. Much like a young player we gotta give him time to learn from his mistakes. My biggest concern is the inability at times to get the team to show effort and play hard. That’s the players letting their “finchy” down but he’s gotta find a way to light a fire or bench them.
Better than Thibs and Ryan.
Let’s revisit all these positive comments in a few weeks when we blow another few big leads
Good coach but very stubborn in his ways. Definitely has not had his scheme supported to the best by the front office. If he can get towns and gobert to work my opinion would be way higher
Best coach for 1st half…
If we’re first round exit again this year, time to start shopping for a new coach
Good coach who needs to keep improving, just like his players.
It’s hard to tell really how good he is because he’s had to completely change the way the team plays both years, but despite that he’s had similar decent outcomes. It’s almost kind of strange how similar these two years have been.
Year 1: Major roster shake-up in the off-season. Started slow while implementing a new defensive scheme and getting guys to buy in. Eventually found themselves and over-performed to finish the season on a high note. Disappointing playoff outcome given how well they played.
Year 2: Major roster shake-up in the off season. Started slow while implementing new defensive (and offensive) schemes and getting guys to buy in. Recently found themselves and are performing well enough despite missing an All-NBA player.
That said, he and his staff have done very well developing young talent and he’s shown, at least a little, that he can adjust his schemes to his players successfully. I think he’s earned the chance to see what he can do with some stability. Maybe once they lock some stuff down they’ll stop blowing big leads in the 4th.
Boob
I like him.
I also see frustration with him. Usually if his hairs a mess you can tell he’s telling himself “you can’t fix stupid”. This can be a very stupid team at times. And I don’t know if any coach can fix that.
Good coach who isn’t perfect (no coach is). Hes clearly still learning and has improved as a coach as much as the players have, which i think is pretty underrated. Coaches can and do get better as players do. I said it last year, and I’ll say it again, but a lot of the criticism as far as rotations, gameplan, game management, and etc are all vague and rarely do people bring any real, concrete evidence or suggestions of what he could have done differently.
I think hes on his way to becoming a very good to great coach. I hope he gets the chance to coach this team for a long time.
He showed a lot of warts in the playoffs last year, mainly regarding rotations and timeout usage, and frankly hasn’t shown much improvement this year. He’s a good coach but it seems like the team still lacks discipline and I’m not sure he’s the one who can bring that to them. We are still blowing big leads and the playing down to bad teams – he bears a lot of blame for that. I personally don’t see him as the long-term coach, especially now that we are in this “win now” mode after the Rudy trade.
Only been here two years and he’s already about to pass Thibs and Adelman for second winningest coach in franchise history.
Not a perfect coach but one we’ve desperately needed. Is a better coach than Thibs though
He is a good coach, but so stubborn. He needs to be able to be flexible in adjustments and expect the other team to also make adjustments. Big respect to him tho for keeping players accountable (IE benching Dlo in the 4th of the playoff game with Memphis)
Not a perfect head coach but far from bad, overall I’d say he’s above average to good
He’s the first coach that I have a reasonable level of confidence in other than Flip.
I remember having high expectations of Adelman and Thibs based off their previous success, but it was clear right away how outdated and rigid their schemes were and how they didn’t adapt to the roster we had. Finch had a lot of success last year, and now his team is way different as he had to adjust to no KAT, work in a traditional big like Rudy, and have a lot of new faces.
I think he’s done a reasonably good job working everyone in. He tends to ride the hot hand at the end of games if someone like Nowell is on fire or like when D’Lo didn’t close a game cause he was messing up too much. I like that as opposed to the rigid set substitutions I would see from a “good” coach like Thibs’.
His true test will be when KAT is back in action and trying to get the team to gel with him and Rudy together. If he can make that happen in time for the playoffs then I’ll be super impressed. However I also have reasonable expectations that he might not get that sorted out until next year.
Great tits
Best coach we’ve had in a loonnngggg time. Players seem to like him. Has flaws but seems to be improving.
I am surprised how many on here think that Finch is a good coach.
Players seem to like him but I am not sure what he has done to give people confidence.
He is nowhere near the top third of coaches in the NBA (I would probably put him near the bottom third). The Wolves seem to have lost a lot of games due to being outcoached. That shouldn’t happen often in the NBA. I can’t think of a game this season where the Wolves won due to outcoaching their opponent.
I think he doesn’t get nearly enough credit for scheme player development – especially considering how many young players we rely on, and core players constantly missing large chunks of time over the past 2 years between injuries and COVID.
Ant and Jaden have both developed ahead of schedule on his watch. A lot of coaches would be content for Ant to be a 1 dimensional scorer and Jaden a defensive role player, but they got Ant playing defense and looking to pass the ball, and Jaden getting more involved as a shot-take and maker. I remember a lot of people thinking the Jonathan Isaac comp was a long-shot and it being unlikely for Jaden to reach that level of defense.
Prince and SloMo have both done some of their best work under him and Vando blew up under him as well. His high wall scheme empowered both KAT and DLo to look decent defensively, which would’ve seemed impossible at one time.
People take the player-development for granted. There’s a lot of coaches that don’t have the patience for young player; they would just start Taurean and not even bother with it. With Finch, I feel good about guys like Moore and Minott. If they don’t play, I don’t feel like he’s burying them for no reason – I think he’s shown that he knows when a guy is ready to get out there.
I’m a big Finchy guy, as I think he has a lot of what made me so fond of Flip as a coach.
I LOVED Flip. I still daydream about what he would’ve done in his second stint with the young pups. It sucks we were robbed of that.
Has it been perfect? No.
But I’ve had more fun watching the team during his tenure than I have in a very long time. Plus I really enjoy the relationship he’s built with Ant.
B+
He’s a decent coach that has flaws.
He raised the floor for us but I’m thinking he has reached his ceiling.
I’ve seen him get outcoached by bad coaches. Giving up leads consistently, that’s a coaching problem. We are bad against losing teams. He needs to prepare us better than just say “we need to give better effort” after those losses.
I think this is the last year of Finch. The only argument to keep him around is money + Ant seems to like him.
I think Quinn is a target for ownership and the Hawks are trying to get him before we get in the race.
Finch was advertised as motion offense coach. He overachieved last year with this scheme. TC brought here Gobert – a rim runner who needs pick-n-rolls. Without Towns Finch transformed last year offense around Gobert DHO, DLo scoring and Edwards ISOs and some pick-n-rolls. DLo went nuclear, Edwards has improved.
Now Finch has another challenge – transform our offense once again around Gobert-Edwards-Towns with Conley as facilitator. Quite a challenge.
I don’t know about you, guys, but I root for this guy, for this coach. He has his flaws, like any HC. But I will support him through everything.
I think he still makes some questionable decisions in terms of lineups, and timeouts but I feel like it’s getting better. I like that he’s the first to admit when he could have done something better, and I think that’s why he’s getting better as a coach.