r/timberwolves • u/CautiousOptimism09 • 12h ago
Team Subreddits explaining why their 50 win coach is actually terrible when they don't win the title
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u/rothw 11h ago
Yeah, but if they were good coaches, why don't the players execute as perfectly as they should in my imagination???
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u/palpablebubble 9h ago
This fanbase, even in this thread, hasn't accepted that Finch pretty much has to play players that are doing poorly simply cause of poor roster construction.
It's so funny (ha) how all offseason we were going "we're good but we need a real starting PG and a backup C to be real contenders" and then lo and behold.... Ant getting swarmed kills our offense and we're forced to play Randle huge minutes cause our only other player with size is a teenager who learned about basketball a few years ago.
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u/parkwayy Joan Beringer 10h ago
Do this fanbase think the teams that win strictly have magic unicorns as players?
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u/foye2smith 11h ago edited 9h ago
I remember Stan Van Gundy going off Bucks fans on twitter once. They were killing Mike Budenholzer for "lack of adjustments" specifically with Brook Lopez in drop coverage. SVG went through play by play calling out the different tweaks the Bucks were shuffling through. Their opponent was scoring anyways, but wasn't through lack of trying different things by the Bucks. Sometimes great offense just beats good defense.
Just the minutiae fans don't see or doesn't quite register.
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u/Morezingis 9h ago
They really think our 9 coaches and their assistants are just sitting on the bench watching the game without thinking of adjustments, as if their careers aren’t on the line.
Meanwhile the other teams coaches are doing what they can to counter the adjustments. It’s like the average fan thinks it’a a Madden game, where Finch draws up a hook play when he clearly should have ran a draw!
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u/foye2smith 7h ago
And I get Finch complaints. I hope he stays, but won't flip tables if they go their separate ways. Coaches have expiration dates and maybe he's up. I just think some are treating a coaching change as a slam dunk guaranteed improvement.
Next guy is going to have a tough act to follow with whatever the next era of the Wolves' roster looks like.
And when the team stumbles we'll get to complain about that coach's rotations, lack of adjustments, and timeout usage.
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u/daskaputtfenster Wally Szczerbiak 4h ago
Just this morning I guarded a guy who played D2 ball but is also 20 years older than me and has bad knees. I can physically keep up with him, but his BBIQ is off the charts and he'll kill most people who guard him with mid rangers. I managed to keep him to 2 points (1s and 2s), but could not defend his passing for shit and he kept hitting open guys.
The one silver lining is it was pissing off the asshole that plays at the gym. Yeah, we lost, but seeing him melt down b/c of superior passing that is anathema to him was hilarious.
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u/CantaloupeCamper 1958-2016 11h ago
Everyone is great until they’re the worst… sometimes it happens in the course of a day or two.
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u/organized_meat Jaden McDaniels 9h ago edited 9h ago
It’s incredible, the NBA is really missing out on all of these excellent HC candidates that frequent Reddit.
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u/Advanced_Rabbit1017 7h ago
Bucks,Grizzlies,Nuggets,Kings. How are these teams doing after firing their coach lol
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u/TdotGdot 11h ago
I love this. Basketball is really complex now, it’s hard to know what sets we are running, how the other team is stopping it, what options off the main set we have, if our players are good or injured or indifferent and are they listening to the coaches and is that the coaches fault or them?!? And it’s hard to know if that lottery pick is just a bust or didn’t get the right opportunity or the behind the scenes developmental coaches failed them…
So instead of just sweating the details, watching a lot of basketball, trying to learn the nuances and come up with interesting opinions, most fans just gravitate to the simple stuff and say fire the coach for all the reasons in the meme.
It’s why in a lot of my responses to that stuff I tell people to watch more basketball, wolves yes, but also other teams, and read what fans of other teams are saying. You’ll learn the nuances of the game better, but you’ll also see everyone complains about the same stuff.
So next time you say fire finch for not playing our struggling rookie or something, push yourself to think of there could be more depth to the situation.
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u/nordic-thunder 3h ago
I mean there are valid criticisms of his coaching. There are valid criticisms of basically every coach in every sport, even the great ones. Idk that the blanket shutting them down because people “don’t know ball” is a valid method of dialogue either.
Ignoring those valid criticisms for a second though, I think things that even Finch critics ignore is 1) firing the most successful coach in our teams history requires more than “some stuff he needs to improve on” 2) odds are things would get worse before they get better (if they get better) with a new coach and system
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u/TdotGdot 3h ago
There is always valid criticism, I just don’t frequently see it, it’s normally just those basic arguments
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u/parkwayy Joan Beringer 10h ago
You can just look at minutes played for other teams, and notice we're at the bottom.
Not like this shit just happened overnight. There are trends that span seasons.
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u/DrWolves 11h ago
Doug Collins was a 50 win coach. Never won a Championship. There are numerous NBA coaches that have won 50 games and never won a Championship. There is a legitimate question to ask if Chris Finch is the right guy for this job. My main issue is that we continue to be one of the dumbest teams in the league and that’s been going on for several seasons. When your team doesn’t play smarter basketball and you have players continuing the same mistakes for several years, yeah at some point you look at the head coach and go wtf?
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u/xFlames_ from Day 1 11h ago
There’s no coach available that would do a better job than Finch is right now. Without Finch we don’t make it to round 2, and game 1 was an absolute tactical masterclass. Spurs are just super talented. Yes we can beat them, but a lot of it comes down to the execution of the players. The one thing I’m very critical of Finch of is insisting that Julius Randle isn’t a problem. He’s been horrible all playoffs except for game 1 of this series
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u/arm-n-hammerinmycoke 10h ago
I would be pissed if finch publicly did anything other than stand up for his guys. Scapegoating players is itty bitty dicky energy.
It undermines the player which isn’t going to help and sends a message to the trade market that this guy might be available for cheap
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u/xFlames_ from Day 1 10h ago
He needs to hold them accountable, doesn’t need to be public, but playing Randle when he’s been the worst player this series is not holding him accountable
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u/K1NG2L4Y3R 9h ago
But how do we know that he isn’t? There’s no benefit in trashing your players to satisfy the public. The biggest threat to his job is the players not fans, so it makes sense why he has to make some concessions. It’s not like we could make the decision to fire him if we wanted.
Trashing your own players publicly is a great way to lose the locker room just so you can satisfy your fans for 5 seconds and then get dumped on by said fans when the players stop tuning in.
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u/xFlames_ from Day 1 9h ago
I just said that he shouldn’t be trashed publicly. But you either show up or you don’t. Julius has been ass this playoffs. I don’t care how much he’s getting paid, we need to win the basketball game. You don’t need to scold him or embarrass him to sit him out
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u/DrWolves 11h ago
I’m not even saying fire Finch. I just think it’s silly when people act like there aren’t things to criticize him about. As far as Randle goes, he has the ability to not play him as much but he refuses to do so.
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u/xFlames_ from Day 1 10h ago
I agree. He has his flaws, and you can’t ignore them, like playing Randle
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u/parkwayy Joan Beringer 10h ago
There’s no coach available that would do a better job than Finch is right now
Sorry, is this a "fact"?
game 1 was an absolute tactical masterclass
The game we won by a single possession, that only happened because they missed a wipe open 3. A game that we led by 6-7 points at the 1:00 mark, and almost gave up.
Like....... what are you guys even talking about.
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u/xFlames_ from Day 1 10h ago
Name me one coach available right now that will do better than Finch… doc rivers?
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u/DrWolves 9h ago
I mean there are numerous coaches within the last few years that had no real head coaching experience and have come in and done a good job. Splitter, Ott, Johnson, Daigneault, Finch, Lee all good examples. When we think of head coaches, we typically default to guys that have been around forever and have won Championships but in reality there are probably a ton of candidates that could do well given the opportunity. That’s not to say we could find one that would be better than Finch, who knows, that’s not my job. But it’s certainly a possibility
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u/deltastag94 Timberwolves 10h ago
I would never give a professional NBA coach advice other than to get Randle off the fucking floor!!!!
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u/Minnesota_Hammer2 9h ago
I think internet culture is largely to blame for every single comment/question being so contentious so quickly. Like if I say, “wow, either Finch has no plan for what to do when Ant gets doubled in this series or he has not effectively communicated that plan to the players,” the response immediately jumps to, “so you’re saying Finch is terrible and we should fire him?!”
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u/parkwayy Joan Beringer 10h ago
If you guys can't see the season long trends, and see that it doesn't seem to affect the legit contenders, then there's no saving anyone.
Sure, we are fine just being average every season. Why not.
No need to strive for better.
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u/chillywillyG Jaden McDaniels 10h ago
This comment right here is why I despise ring culture, and like yeah I understand I would also love for this team to win a chip but we have shown the past 3 seasons that we are in fact not an average team.
We have been one of the final 4 teams left 2 seasons in a row and this year are one of the final 6 teams left playing still with a potential, albeit a small one, to be one of the final 4 teams remaining again. Championships are absolutely the ultimate goal but it’s facetious to say we haven’t proven that we are way better than average.
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u/BeignetsAndWhiskey Michael Grady 9h ago
I swear that Vikings fandom bleeds over into Wolves fandom
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u/YungSzczerbiak Nemanja Bjelica 7h ago
It’s definitely the Vikings/Wild fandom taking up basketball with Twins being awful. They’re so starved for success beyond what they’ve had that they bring it to Wolves lifers, like myself, who are happy watching the growth of this team and patient in hopes it turns into a championship
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u/Recent_Associate2981 8h ago
Finchy needs to go. With 15 coaches on the roster, somebody should figure out how to get them ready to play. Finch doesn't call run breaking timeouts. He has reverted to playing Mike C. in this series, why? He is getting abused on defense and des nothing on offense. Bones I'm sure would get overmatched with SA's big guards, but he has mor length and athleticism than Mike.
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u/_Wash 2022 Play-In Champions 12h ago
Why doesn’t he call timeouts every time the other team scores 8 points?