What everyone is saying about the Minnesota Timberwolves hiring Chris Finch

The Minnesota Timberwolves abruptly shifted course this week, firing head coach Ryan Saunders and immediately hiring Chris Finch to the same position.

Various media outlets covering the NBA had their own, non-local opinions on the move in addition to the fantastic local coverage in the Twin Cities. Let’s take a spin around some of those opinions.

What everyone is saying about the Minnesota Timberwolves hiring Chris Finch

The shock around the league wasn’t that Saunders was fired, of course. Instead, it was that the Wolves hired Finch, a current head coach on the Toronto Raptors who had literally been on the bench that night.

Taking this further, it isn’t even that Finch was the hire, it’s that this whole thing came together in an evening, midseason. The Wolves didn’t bother to hire an interim coach to play out the string, instead, they simply went ahead and got their guy.

The Athletic’s John Hollinger had perhaps the most interesting view on the situation. As a current/former member of the media and a former front office executive, he is in a unique position to understand both the inner-workings of such a decision as well as the real-time public perception.

Hollinger notes in his article (subscription required) that the Wolves avoided the “time-honored knee-jerk process”, as he calls it, of appointing the lead assistant as head coach and allowing him to either keep the job or walk at the end of the season. At the same time, he derides the Wolves for essentially wasting nearly two years before finally bringing in “the guy they clearly wanted all along.”.

He goes on to talk about this as potentially the best opening for President of Basketball Operations Gersson Rosas to make this move, simply because Rosas himself is starting to feel pressure from the lack of success that the team has had under his watch. Instead of letting this thing play out until May, then fire Saunders, and then be forced to compete with other teams for Finch’s services, Rosas made the move now.

Elsewhere, The Ringer’s Jonathan Tjarks expresses what he believes will be a key indicator in regards to how Karl-Anthony Towns is used in the Finch-led offense.

"The two numbers to watch with Towns are his 3-point attempts (4.7 per game) and assists (3.5), both of which are down from last season. Defenses have been overloading to stop him, and the Wolves have not been able to put the right lineups around him to make them pay. The only way they will get out of the basement is if Towns makes a leap similar to Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid, two players who were once considered his peers but are now leaders in the MVP race."

Tjarks goes on to praise Jaden McDaniels as the roster’s “hidden gem”, noting the rookie’s league-leading block rate by non-centers and the Wolves’ +3.8 net rating with McDaniels on the floor.

Over at Bleacher Report, Eric Pincus is less optimistic, penning a piece with the headline “Is There Any Hope for the NBA’s Most Hopeless Team?”

Pincus cites a few current and former executives who don’t exactly think highly of Towns, D’Angelo Russell, or the Wolves organization as a whole. The one quote that stands out as painfully true, however, is this one:

"“Missing KAT and D’Lo hurts obviously, but the roster doesn’t have much structure,” the Western Conference executive said. “They have some intriguing singular talents but nobody who really fits into the team game outside of some minor players.”"

It’s true. There are defense-only players (Josh Okogie, Jarrett Culver), offense-only players (D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley, Juancho Hernangomez), and supposed two-way players who haven’t been good so far this season (Ricky Rubio, Anthony Edwards).

It’s a deadly combination, obviously, and the Wolves have a ton of work to do from the front office on down.

The local take is always the most accurate, of course, and the recommendation here is to check out Jon Krawczynski’s article over at The Athletic (subscription required), which covers the timeline of events, the high and low-points of Saunders’ head-coaching career with the Wolves, and the league-wide reaction to the Wolves’ hire — and their passing over associate head coach David Vanterpool for the job.

And now, just that quickly, the Wolves are in Milwaukee to take on the Bucks, one of the league’s best teams, led by the back-to-back MVP.

Welcome to the head-coaching game, Chris Finch.