Chris Finch challenges Rudy Gobert to be better with postgame statement

Wednesday night featured a close loss for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and a disappointing one to say the least. The Wolves are at the start of an incredibly difficult stretch of games, and they were hoping to get off on the right foot and begin a new winning streak against what was an undermanned Golden State Warriors team.

Instead, they left Target Center with a one-point loss in what was a very winnable game. This one was basically lost in the first quarter. Minnesota went into the second quarter down 34 to 12, struggling mightily to put points on the board and simultaneously putting themselves in a hole that would take them the remainder of the contest to climb back out of.

There were some bright spots - Donte DiVincenzo and Anthony Edwards, to name a few individual standouts. Minnesota also did a better job of not turning the ball over, giving it away just nine times on Wednesday. But one member of the Wolves' starting five had a less than impressive performance in this one: Rudy Gobert.

Minnesota's starting center finished as a -4 in plus/minus while scoring just seven points and grabbing 10 boards. Now, the 10 rebounds number may not sound so dismal. But Chris Finch pointed out in his postgame presser what we are all seeing - that Gobert can be better in this particular area.

Finch wants Gobert to play to his strengths more

We have already talked recently about how Gobert needs to be better on offense overall right now. But in addition, rebounding - usually his specialty - is less of a strength at the moment as well. Finch was sure to address this in a pointed way.

"I think Rudy's got to go get the ball in the air," said the Timberwolves' coach. "I think he's trying to play like a hand-to-hand combat game, and he gets tied up too much doing that. He does get fouled quite a bit down there doing that ... I'd like to see him just go get the ball in the air with two hands, snag it."

Finch makes a great point in that Gobert could be using his size more to his advantage. Rudy's raw rebounding numbers may not look like they have fallen off a great deal, but the eye test tells us that he is not performing to his talent level right now. If we dig a bit deeper on the statistical side of things, we see that his total rebound percentage (an estimate of the percentage of available rebounds a player grabbed while they were on the floor) is down significantly this season - and is the lowest of his career.

This was an appropriate moment for Finch to address this problem, and it's good for the team that he did it. Gobert knows what he is capable of, and ideally he will use this public comment as motivation to hone in on improving what should be one of his biggest strengths.