As the shock of a midseason coaching change wears off and the reality of playing a game less than 48 hours after hiring a new coach from outside the franchise sets in, the Minnesota Timberwolves have a lot of catching up to do.
Chris Finch is no newcomer to the trials and tribulations of life in the NBA. After playing and coaching all over Europe, the Wolves’ new head coach began his rise through the NBA coaching ranks in 2009 as the head coach of the Houston Rockets’ then-D-League affiliate Rio Grande Valley Vipers, where Minnesota’s current president of basketball operations, Gersson Rosas, was the team’s general manager.
After winning the D-League championship in his first season, Finch eventually became an assistant coach with the Houston Rockets in 2011, before becoming their associate head coach in 2014. He spent two seasons in the position before taking the same job with the Denver Nuggets in 2016, then again in 2017 with the New Orleans Pelicans, and moving into a role with the Toronto Raptors prior to the 2020-21 campaign.
The 51-year-old first-time NBA head coach made his name as a wildly successful offensive assistant and will look to resurrect Minnesota’s 28th-ranked offense.
Finch has plenty of offensive talent to work with, starting with franchise cornerstone Karl-Anthony Towns, breakout flamethrower Malik Beasley, and, eventually, former All-Star D’Angelo Russell who is currently out with a knee injury.
The most important project that Finch will have to work on in order to ensure the franchise moves in the right direction is No. 1 overall pick Anthony Edwards.
Minnesota Timberwolves: Chris Finch will unlock Anthony Edwards’ potential
While Towns is the current face of the franchise, Edwards is the unequivocal future of the Timberwolves. Edwards has had his moments during his rookie campaign, but the 19-year-old has also seen his fair share of struggles and developed a slew of bad habits that his new coach needs to hammer out going forward.
The most glaring weakness in Edwards’ game 31 games into his career is a mix between poor outside shooting and a penchant for settling for bad shots.
Edwards is shooting just 31.3 percent from beyond the arc to start the season, the fourth-worst mark on a team that ranks 19th in 3-point percentage. But that hasn’t stopped the rookie from jacking up as many threes as he can: the rookie takes 5.8 threes per contest, just behind Beasley and Russell for the highest rate on the team.
That number accounts for 41 percent of his total shot attempts per game, with another 45 percent coming within 10 feet and the remaining 14 percent coming from mid-range.
Using his elite athleticism to get to the rim as much as possible should be Edwards’ goal while he develops a more reliable outside shot. Finch’s offensive schemes can take advantage of what Edwards can do and get him moving towards the rim at a higher and more efficient volume.
The 51-year-old head coach involves a lot of off-ball screens and constant cutting in his offensive schemes. According to NBA.com/stats, the Saunders-led Timberwolves have scored just 1.15 points per possession on cuts, fourth-worst in the NBA. Similarly, they only score 0.86 points per possession off of a screen, which ranks No. 23 in the NBA.
Edwards himself is scoring just 0.74 points per possession off a screen, which is the 19th percentile, and 1.05 points per possession from a cut, the 18th percentile. If Finch can get Edwards working on moving without the ball, screening, and making timely cuts, Edwards should be able to get the ball more frequently moving towards the basket in easier positions to score at the hoop.
As basketball continues to evolve into a 3-point shooting contest, sooner or later Edwards will need to become a consistent 3-point shooter. Timberwolves fans should look no further than the evolution of another former high lottery pick who struggled to shoot early in his career and eventually improved massively under Finch’s tutelage, Lonzo Ball.
After being selected second overall by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2017 draft Ball struggled with the long-ball right out of the gate. In his first two years in LA, the eldest Ball brother shot just 30.5 percent and 32.9 percent from three, respectively. After getting traded to New Orleans in 2019, Ball immediately improved his stroke to the tune of 37.5 percent during his one year under Finch.
This season, after Finch moved on to Toronto, Ball has become a consistent knockdown shooter hitting a career-high 39.1 percent of his 7.7 3-point attempts per game. Much of this is due to scheme and the quality of shot attempts that Ball is taking, and Finch can claim some credit for that.
Compared to Ball, Edwards has fairly decent-looking shot mechanics so there is a lot of hope that Edwards under the right coaching will evolve into a more consistent shooter and can hit somewhere between 37 and 40 percent of his threes. Even if he isn’t a sharpshooter, knocking down threes at an above-league-average clip would make a massive difference.
Anthony Edwards oozes raw potential and looks like a young star who is eager to take a leap into superstardom. With a new coach in town who can hopefully press the right buttons to tap into Edwards’ immense potential, Timberwolves fans should be excited to see how Finch and Edwards can work with each other and finally point this franchise in the right direction.