Timberwolves coach Chris Finch noted Minnesota made Tuesday’s overtime victory over the three-win Pelicans far more difficult than it needed to be.

Minnesota opened up a comfortable first-quarter lead in New Orleans, but a disastrous second quarter — in which the coach said his team “completely lost focus and intensity” — left the Wolves chasing the rest of the night. They caught the short-handed Pelicans just in time to force an extra session that probably shouldn’t have been necessary.

“Unfortunately,” Finch said on his weekly appearance with Paul Allen on KFXN-100.3, “that’s in our DNA right now.”

There are 82 regular season games. You will not win all of those. You won’t even win all of the ones you’re supposed to win. It’s a part of the season. But Finch noted, sometimes you simply don’t have your game on a given evening, and sometimes you do things to hurt yourself. He felt Tuesday was another example of the latter.

“I felt very confident at halftime (when Minnesota was trailing by 10) that we were going to win the game,” Finch told Allen, “but it’s not a habit you want to dig into where you have to dig yourself out of a hole on the road and rely on overtime to get it done.

“There’s a difference between a good win and a good performance.”

And while you’ll always take the win, Finch noted “long-term success is built on good performance.” The Wolves haven’t compiled enough of those through the first quarter of the season. There have certainly been some, but they haven’t been strung together.

“As coaches, I believe what I can see and what we can repeat, and that’s it. I’m not big into hope. I’m not big into just hoping it all comes together. I try to root ourselves into what we can repeat every night,” Finch told Allen. “When you have inconsistencies, you’ve got to get those out of your game. That’s what defines the different levels of performance in the league, whether it’s the OKCs of the world — who are a championship level — or the lesser teams. You’re just trying to get to that next level, and it’s all about finding that consistency in your game.”

Allen brought up the idea of Minnesota potentially believing it can be a “press the button” team that can call up quality play at a moment’s notice when that’s what’s required. Finch admitted “there is some fear of that at the moment.”

“We’ve got to try to raise our standards,” he said.

The Wolves are 13-8 heading into Thursday’s rematch in New Orleans, but that record was built on a soft opening schedule. While many may compare this year’s slow start to the one of a season ago, Finch said “last year’s team and last year’s struggles were completely different.”

“The reality is, last year’s team, we had a vision for what last year’s team was going to be, and we worked towards it and we stayed focused on it and it eventually it came together — through struggles, through the transition of the trade and all the things that we’ve talked about numerous times,” Finch told Allen. “This year’s team, we have to have a different vision.

“We know what our team should look like. And we have to be more consistent to that approach, and then we’ve got to find and bring these young guys along with that and see who can help us when it matters, when we’re really going to need them. Our team does need to get over that hurdle. We can’t just expect it to happen. We don’t want to pick up bad habits along the way.”

Minnesota is nowhere near panic mode. The Wolves were sixth in the West heading into Wednesday’s NBA slate.

“Long season, we’ll make up ground as we go along,” Finch told Allen. “Provided that we find that consistency that we talked about.”