This!

Plus going from Gobert to Randle as defenders is a challenge. Both incredibly strong compared to Wemby

yeah and we’ll see how Wemby holds up playing 37+ mins per game. His gas tank will be empty if they make it out this round lol

The entire Wolves roster is built to wear you down.

Rudy doesn’t care if he sits the 4th. Wemby had like 5pts going into the 4th largely because of Rudy.

I’m just glad people other than us or Utah fans are starting to clock his intangible but heavy effect.on the game, ya know?

You need both, for sure. But the reason Gobert was off the court wasn’t his defense, of course, it’s that it gives wemby too much of a chance to roam 

The endgame was always going to be Ju on wemby and 5 shooters out there, putting wemby in action with two ball handlers than can shoot and score 

That’s just the recipe. But we need Gobert minutes too, I like how finch saved that look, or at least waited to use it for an extend stretch, until later in the game 

Why not start a game with hack a Gobert ?

His ability to manage relationships is his super power. Hes not afraid to sit anybody, no matter their status, if it increased our chance of winning. Some coaches get scared to stir things up, he welcomes it

Never see a lot of hype for Finch like you see for Mazzulla/Spo/etc, but he seems like a great coach to me. For the most part it seems like he trusts and respects his players, and they play hard for him.

Finch has been great in every playoffs he’s coached. Idk what the fuck he’s doing in the regular season though.

Also drew up a play to immediately target Castle when he checked back in with five fouls and knocked him out of the game. This kinda goes for all levels, high school to the pros, but it’s always kinda bothered me how hard coaches find it to target a team’s good players when they’re playing with just one foul left. Great job by Finch to immediately take Castle off the floor for good.

Wolves scored a staggering 35 points in the 4Q. Finch has been amazing so far

Yea. We just shot better in the 4th, minus the last 2 minutes. Wolves also has a tendency to go through team slumps.

Did we watching the same last 3 minutes? They completely shit the bed and very easily could have lost. 

well it helps when one of ur players doesn’t Goldberg spear u on the court

Three years straight of his teams rising in the playoffs, its very unique. Back against the wall, nobody fights harder. Happy hes getting some love because a portion of our fanbase still wants him fired tonight for whatever reason

Some wolves fans wanted him fired like a week ago

Carisile last year w/ the Pacers?

Especially in round 2. Cleveland used a crazy zone in G3 to really fuck with the Pacers. In G4, the Pacers had all the answers and put belt to ass. Up 80-39 at halftime. Ripped right through the zone with actions that the Pacers integrated into the offense in 2 days.

also 1) the late game comebacks and 2) how the team had answers/adjustments to everything

Finch is given more to work with tbf - Spo was out there trying to make a gourmet meal with a fucking staff of random ass dudes he found at Walmart. Not a knock on finch, but goddamn, Spo in that stretch from 2020 up to 2023 really got random ass scrubs paid.

He’s very even keeled. Impressive few years he’s had.

Top 3 is tough. Spo, Carlisle, Mazzulla, and Kerr (if we’re counting peaks) all have arguments over Finch. JB is hot on his heels, too.

TC getting Ayo for him still blows my mind

Some wolves fans are about to have a crash out over this post. There is absolutely nothing the man can do to convince him he isn’t a bad coach. 

Dillingham sucks, it’s reasonable not to play him.

Sounds like JJ with Dalton Knecht

Yeah, but why didn’t Terrance get much minutes?

bro if the opposing team scores a single basket our sub melts down 

This thread is about to have some crash outs, I swear some fans would rather see the Wolves lose then admit Finch is the best coach the Wolves have ever had, and it’s not even close anymore. I lost a little faith at the end of the season, but how can you watch the playoffs and still come away bitching about him.  

“Minnesota bitter” fan base…on all sports. It will continue until we somehow win one, in any sports.

He’s a good coach in the regular season but he is a fucking elite playoff coach. Straight up a playoff riser

Yeah its nuts

A lot of those people were Dillingham truthers.

Was it only during regular season or during playoffs as well?

I will be pleasantly surprised if anyone wanted him gone during playoffs.

I don’t understand many arguments for firing Finch, my feeling was always that when they lost the players would outright say “we didn’t listen to the gameplan” and when you go through the peaks and valleys this team has, seeing their potential and then watching it squandered in a bunch of inexcusable losses, you obviously can’t fire the whole team. But credit to them, so far they’ve delivered on their promise of flipping the switch again

No one actually thinks Malone got fired for losing to the Wolves a year before, what

and just as importantly he has complete buy in from the team to not worry about benching anybody if things aren’t working and going with what is

Sir, can I hire you to come into a sub once a month during the regular season and remind us all of this

There were like 8 different points this season that our sub overwhelmingly wanted him fired midseason

To be fair they have to attack. Their 3 best 3 pt shooters are Ant (2 bad knees), DDV, and Ayo. You got about ²⁄₃ of one of those players today.

I’m not as impressed with the Wolves continuing basic attacks on the guy putting up 11 blocks. I thought they made some good “adjustments” rather than continuing to attack the same way they did in the previous series and earlier in the game which caused Wemby to be less effective defensively. 

They started getting a body on him when he was in the paint so he couldn’t block the shot and drivers did a good job engaging him to open up the dump off pass. To me, yes, they want to tire him out, but that’s gonna be more about putting a body on him throughout the game. They want to do more of what they did in the 4th quarter rather than earlier on when he was getting all those blocks. It’s usually not gonna be worth the fatigue to have a defender get so many blocks on you. 

yes this is what you have to do against elite shot blockers not be scared of the rim but keep going until they physically cant keep up with you to continue blocking you. If your team gets scared and starts just running away everytime the defender gets a free possession of minimal effort, conserving energy. Also helps that finchy pulled out wemby to the weakside in the 4th making those rotations even harder to get to from the weakside. And then you have to credit randle with his amazing gortat screens to clear lanes and keep wemby away from weakside help.

Conley was saying on the broadcast interview that they wanted to keep up the rim pressure

He said it doesn’t matter if Wemby has 11-12 blocks, keep the pressure up

Probably to tire him out or get Wemby in foul trouble. It did have an interesting effect of getting the Spurs guard in foul trouble instead.

This is what I always say if you want to beat wemby. You have to keep attacking him but he’ll rack up blocks. Guys will get blocked and start being passive. that feeds into our defense

I would more describe it as trying to take him out of the play or engage him so that he cannot block the shot. They hit him with at least one Gortat screen late so he couldn’t help on a drive. When they had him in the screening action, they were able to get some open looks from three more than anything at the rim, at least how I saw it. 

It’s so bizarre to read that lol. I’m used to the opposite

We’d rather have him shooting threes than dunks and put backs.

I don’t want to hear a Spurs fan say anything about dishonest defense with goaltendyana on their team.

This is something Jokic also usually struggles with against the Wolves, he can’t force them to change what they are doing by making enough of those 3s

In the regular season, Randle got really physical with Wemby and got some good stops

I was too stressed to notice what we were running but it looked like he kept settling for 3’s and our coaches weren’t running any plays to get him open looks in the mid range or around the basket. Castle being in foul trouble hurt wemby too on offense. Hopefully our coaches have a good gameplan for wednesday. Finch was great today.

Whenever I think about criticizing Finch, I look at our roster. It’s a bunch of complete goofballs. Finch might secretly be one of the GOATs.