Minnesota Timberwolves’ Chris Finch Practice Interview Before Game 2 vs. Dallas Mavericks

Minnesota Timberwolves’ Chris Finch Practice Interview Before Game 2 vs. Dallas Mavericks

thetical kind of a refresher type of thing and yeah it was a rough film session I told the guys it’s been a long time since I’ve been this disappointed in your effort and your performance your attitude your application your attention to detail just wasn’t there uh Western Conference Finals started don’t not sure if they got the memo they got this afternoon so what did you try to hammer home the most with with that I just yeah me our approach like it just we we just played flat you know um game plan was not on point for uh execution uh decision- making on offense was not very good um you know got beat by a lot of hustle plays transition offensive rebounds stuff like that just can’t happen so coach how does it feel like that um footb back from Caron TOS that was not validated change the atmosphere of the game I mean yeah Ian inconsequential in the overall scheme of the game we didn’t play well enough to win so um one call here there is not going to matter in the second round I think you and maybe some other members of the team after the Gap in between two and three said that maybe that contributed to the flatness yeah maybe that was the same symptom no doubt yeah so I said to our guy you know we’re three and three at home and we have two kind of similar performances after coming off stints of success uh there’s a lot of ways you know immaturity kind of rears its head and this might be one of them and you know but uh they got our attention now so there’s no reason for us to be uh you know feeling ourselves so do you think you play better after you’ve had one loss like that that like you feel yeah I’m sure we’ll come out and play better you know it’s hard to imagine that we’re going to play much worse um but uh you know there’s lots of things that uh I’m sure Dallas is going to look to adjust to as well so um every one of these games has a personality of its own so do you like things you saw in the first half or you were just disappointed overall I mean you know the there were things we did well of course we were able to build a lead a lot of you know a lot of our kind of most uh kind of disappointing periods of play were when we had a lead um so yeah but that but I think it’s you know there there was some things to learn from and be able to do better for sure um but not a ton to be like really kind of super happy about and had only two attempts in the restricted area obviously that’s a priority for the Mavs pain how much that was what they did and how much it out was what a didn’t do yeah I mean they do a good job they put Five Guys in the uh restricted many of them in there illegally um but uh we didn’t do enough downhill attacking we spent a lot lot of time going east west so Chris with the some of the execution and energy things how do you think that can apply directly to the matchups of donic and well I mean I listen I thought Jaden was great he battled all night long you know got through a thousand screens many of those illegal too um and he just kept coming he contested everything even the shot that sealed it um you know was well contested you know so we got to do a better job of giving him some help you know with um with some of the different things that we can do but um yeah I thought you know I thought he was really one of our bright spots so Kyrie does what he does on transition in the paint yeah what do you guys need to do now to kind of make life a little tougher for him yeah I mean I mean he I think 11 of his you know 24 points in the first half were in early attacks it’s where he’s been so good for them um you know we didn’t do a good job of getting back he got behind us once he got he split us a couple times um yeah so we just we knew those were coming we just were not good enough um getting back in transition in numbers and kind of showing them enough bod so and Ki in the first half he was like well we got a triple double with the assist stuff like that and then uh second half let’s play making What specifically do you think that he can do better and him as um yeah I thought it’s like I thought he held a lot you know I thought uh kind of um too much holding a lot of indecision um you know I thought a little more decisive in in the first uh first half so Chris has been a few times this year where where you’ve had frustration or the players have talked about kind of like some fatigue in a in a game and there has been right away the next game a bounce back in those areas what what has gone into that maybe it was a film session like today but when that’s work I mean we have a pretty good bounceback team I we got High character guys they care they recognize they own their mistakes they own the performance um you know um you know we got we got depth so um there’s always different options to go to uh guys have been pretty locked in uh I think in terms of executing game plans we’ve been really good all all postseason uh this was probably our worst showing there so I think we’ll be more locked in on what we’re trying to do in the game plans yeah you feel like you got be able to yeah no doubt uh you know we’re not the fastest team uh by any stretch imagination but we got to get easy buckets we got to get out and um I could tell when the game started we you know even though we had might have had 10 in the first H quarter we were we weren’t really putting effort in getting up and down the floor like stretching the defense so we got to be much better there Chris when you guys played your first two preseason games against against Dallas um do you remember what what you thought of dck lley as a player and did you have any idea that that he would you know already be playing a role like he is yeah I mean I think uh it’s a long way back but you could see the activity for sure you know the the athleticism it’s a perfect compliment to Ruka in a lot of ways um you know like most rookies his head was spinning uh as we watch him through the regular season he just got better and better every every single time we saw him play so um really good young player and with the addition of Gafford you know the way they platoon those guys keeps them fresh um it kind of adds to their impact when when you guys were attacking from the weak side attacking close outs seemed like as you were trying to drive the MS were able to get hands on a lot of balls a lot of dribbles what do you want to see out of those situations to get kind of more clean execution yeah I mean uh uh they they definitely stripped us a few times you know we’re going into a crowd we got to avoid playing in the crowd I thought the last uh donic strip was definitely a foul you know that’s a big no call right there um but beyond that you know we got to be mindful of the always heavy in the gaps and they’re always trying to reach um and you know we got to make the early play Chris you guys 49 of your 89 shots from Beyond the yeah how much that diet was you know intentional how much was you know you playing into what they wanted you guys to do I don’t uh I think listen like we I wouldn’t say that we played into what they wanted us to do they gave us a lot of I thought we could have taken another 10 wide openen threes if we would have made the right play um we do have to get to the rim a little bit more for sure I think when we get there we got to certainly finish a little bit better um but with like I said with their number of bodies that they have in the paint um sitting on Anthony and Cat Drive in particular uh you know they’re going to offer us shots and we usually try to just take what the defense gives us no matter where it is if at The Rim or at the three-point line so awesome thanks thanks guys appreciate it

Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch spoke to reporters after Thursdays’ practice ahead of Game 2 of their Western Conference finals series against the Dallas Mavericks in their 2024 NBA playoff series.

Video: Minnesota Timberwolves

X: https://twitter.com/GrantAfseth
Facebook: https://facebook.com/GrantGAfseth
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GrantAfseth
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/grantafseth

Check out my full Dallas Mavericks coverage on https://MavericksGameday.com for daily updates, analysis, and exclusive interviews. You can also check out my NBA work at https://NBAAnalysis.net.