Welcome to part two of the annual MinnPost interview with Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch, who talks about his and the team’s mindset on the brink of the preseason training camp later this month. Part one can be found here.
In this segment, Finch does a deep dive into the potential impact of LaMelo Ball, the star point guard brought in to provide more passing and playmaking in a manner that enables Anthony Edwards to return to his natural shooting guard position. Jaden McDaniels, the quiet but crucial wing stopper on defense whose offensive contributions have steadily grown, is also discussed at length. The segment ends with Finch proclaiming that “the diapers are off” when it comes to young but now-veteran cogs like Ant and McDaniels being asked to guide the team, while at the same time needing to include Rudy Gobert, the last of the holdover players over 30 on the roster, as they weather the roster changes and hopefully compete for a championship.
MinnPost: How much does your team identity change because of LaMelo? At both ends of the court.
Finch: [Pause] To be determined. As I sit here now, I want to see how it plays out. Your identity is driven by your best players, for sure, and we still have them. I can see a lot of our offensive identity still flowing through Ant.
It is just that I think we have a chance to play faster, be a better passing team, maybe people benefit from off-ball movement more. With Rudy, a lot of different things (can happen), so I can see everything kind of get a little polished, if you will. But ultimately a lot of our identity is still going to flow through Anthony a lot.
MP: You talked about getting LaMelo a sense of who you guys are as a team. As gifted as he is, he’s been somewhat inefficient. He runs a very efficient offense —
Finch: Yes.
MP: But his two-point shooting is not as accurate as someone of his capacity should be.
Finch: Right.
MP: And his assist-to-turnover ratio is very ordinary, close to 2.5-to-1 (a career-best 2.54-to-1 last season).
Finch: Yeah.
MP: I imagine you think those are things that can be changed in this environment.
Finch: For sure. A couple things there. Some of his individual inefficiencies on offense are related to shot selection and decision-making.
MP: Right.
Finch: He can make all those shots he takes, but making a living off of those shots is different and very hard to do. So I think there needs to be some redistribution on how he shoots. It is like anything else: If you want to be a good shooter, the first thing you should do is get rid of the bad shots. He does take some — and he can make them. But I think he has relied heavily on it.
The second piece is the finishing aspect. I think he goes into the paint a lot of the time as a passer, with a passing mentality — because he is so elite at it. So he might lose the mentality of how he wants to finish; the finishing becomes more of an afterthought, or simply escaping the shot-blocker, or whatever.
So we really want him to focus on having a finishing plan, and embracing the contact that comes with finishing down there (at the rim) a little bit more. He’s got the size to do it. And early returns have been great. He’s really been putting the work in, in and around the basket. I just think his deep-paint decision-making, for that piece, needs to be a little more selfish, in terms of having a plan and working the plan.
I haven’t studied the turnovers piece. If you are looking at it from a career perspective, I might say maybe he didn’t have people (teammates) to complete those plays.
MP: The pejorative way to look at some of the things he does, and it is backed by some of the eye test, is that he is a happy-go-lucky player.
Finch: Yes.
MP: He can seem like one of those guys who looks like he is having fun rather than getting things done.
Finch: Yes. [Chuckles] But you can do both.
I would agree with that. I think it is a fair assessment when looking at him up to this point. But I do think there are a couple of other things. One is, when you look at the (performance) numbers of his teammates when he was on or off the floor last year, and when they would go on those runs, I mean those are —
MP: Those are no accident. Absolutely.
Finch: Right. That’s not by accident. And I’m sure that (impact) is repeatable. You know? And I think it was because it was the first complete set of teammates that accentuated his skill set, too. And that included (teammates) who could create their own offense too, and he could make it all work.
Related: Will Timberwolves’ LaMelo Ball trade unlock the next level of superstardom in Anthony Edwards?
MP: Do you feel like you need either him or Ant on the floor for all 48 minutes, or do you want others — because you have some intriguing guys off the bench, including Bones (Hyland), TJ or Ayo.
Finch: Right now as I look at it, I don’t feel that we need (one or the other) of those guys on the floor for all 48. With TJ, what we learned is that he is more of a top-of-the-floor player. He needs the ball and he needs the angles that you get at the top of the floor. He is really good, when he initiates, at just straight-line driving. He needs to improve his out-of-the-corner game. But you have to give him opportunities to create (at the top of the floor) for him to be his best self. Now LaMelo could play alongside him; I’m certainly not saying he couldn’t. But Ayo is the same in that regard too.
MP: One of the biggest positives in getting LaMelo is making Ant a catch-and-shoot player or being able to get him the ball more in single coverage.
Finch: I would put it a different way. We don’t want to make Ant just be a catch-and-shoot guy. He needs to get back to increasing his (shot) volume and we weren’t able to do that last year with Ant handling the ball as much as he did.
That was the original “sin,” if you will. The reason Ant’s three-point volume fell is because he handled so much more. It wasn’t that guys weren’t able to create for him. It is just the natural way things play out: You don’t get the ball back as much when you are handling so often.
MP: Right. And I’m sure you already know the disparity in accuracy between his catch-and-shoot and pull-up shooting. And the other NBA players that had such a large disparity became more efficient by devoting more of their shot mix to catch-and-shoot — they didn’t pull-up as often. But Ant couldn’t regulate that shot mix that way because he had the ball in his hands so often.
Finch: Right, right, right.
Listen, every player is their best self when they are playing their natural position, and doing it alongside guys who are playing their natural position. And Ant is naturally the most explosive two-guard in the league.
MP: Right. And LaMelo is naturally a point guard. Extending that out, is Jaden McDaniels naturally a three, a small forward?
Finch: Oh yeah. We are where we always are: We need another step (forward) from Jaden. And now — you know how I am always talking about the usage puzzle? (How to get every player the amount of plays and shots — the level of usage — that they need.) Of course LaMelo is going to have the ball in his hands a lot. But I think he is going to create some easier opportunities that maybe didn’t happen organically in our offense before. They happened because Mike Conley made them happen, for Jaden specifically, and that is all-credit to Mike and his understanding of how to get his guys going.
I think LaMelo has that, too. I also feel that, with the pace of play and style of play there will be more (opportunities). Mike wasn’t a throw-ahead guy (naturally stimulating transition) like LaMelo is. So organically we expect some more opportunities to land in Jaden’s lap. And now he has proven that he is a play-call guy.
MP: Which gets us back to the usage puzzle. Because with the offensive talent on the roster you have, every play that gets called is precious.
Finch: Yeah.
MP: And I’m sure one of the reasons Jaden hasn’t had more plays called for him even as he’s improved at that end is because he can manufacture plays for himself and others without it.
Finch: Sure.
MP: It is clear how much you trust Jaden. The way a coach most demonstrates what he thinks of a player is how much time that player logs on the court, and the minutes Jaden gets rivals the minutes that Ant gets. I remember in our first long preseason interview, you likened Jaden’s potential to Scottie Pippen. And you acknowledged it was outsized praise but it was in your mind.
Finch: Yes.
MP: And it has been a steady but slow growth for Jaden in revealing all those aspects of his game, but it is coming. To me, along with LaMelo, he seems like the player on the team best able to unlock Rudy on offense. Do you feel that way?
Finch: That, more than anything, is what needs to come to the surface with Jaden. I think last year he went the entire season trusting that his opportunities were always going to be there every night. I think before that he probably would tell you, “I don’t know if I’m going to get six shots or sixteen.” And he still was in more [of] the aggressive mindset to put the ball in the basket. I think now we need his playmaking anyway, and I think he is a really good passer — he’s one of our best interior passers.
MP: Nobody else is able to make a bounce pass to Rudy that he can complete but Jaden.
Finch: And he also has the ability with his size — more on broken plays, slot drives, and baseline drives — to find Rudy. When Rudy first got here they really had a connection. And I think it dried up for a variety of reasons, but more because Jaden was in a mindset to score, because the opportunities were (up and down).
But yeah, I feel like the more we are going to put the ball in your hands, the more you have to make the right decision. And sometimes, often, it is passing.
MP: Jaden is a pretty quiet guy, but can he become a team leader? Or is it mostly that he will lead by example?
Finch: I think ultimately you have to lead by example. So I would put him in the “team leader” category. Ultimately his team, they know what drives Jaden, they know the consistency of his approach — his effort and professionalism is always there. They know that he has always got their back, even to the point where he is one of our most feisty guys, one of our instigators. And they love all that about him.
Can he be more vocal? I hope so. But it is not that — he has always been the guy who says simple things, like “We’re bullshitting here,” things like that. And so when the guys who rarely or never speak do speak, you listen to them.
But we purposefully haven’t added a bunch of veterans to the team this year. My approach with Ant or with Jaden or with all these guys is, if we’re going to take the diapers off, let’s take the diapers off. Like, it’s your team now. What you say and the way you say it, and setting the tone from the first days of practice; that stuff matters. And it’s time. It is seven years in the league.
I feel like Jaden will do his part in that. But I have learned that it is not fair to put players in positions — you think about other things in life, if someone asks you to be outside yourself to do something, it is uncomfortable. And that can drive an anxiety all the time: “I’m supposed to be this other thing.”
MP: This is one of the things I have on my list to ask you. Because you have lost a lot of wisdom. Conley, Slo Mo (Kyle Anderson) —
Finch: Joe Ingles.
MP: Joe Ingles. And these are the folks who were the regulators, in mood and spirit. So are you looking for Ant and some of the other older, but still young, players on the roster to be in the mix as team leaders?
Finch: Yeah. But again, following off the same logic, I wouldn’t expect Ant to be Mike Conley or Joe Ingles or even try and process the game the way they did. Ant needs to lead according to his personality. There is always room for growth with all those guys.
Yeah, we lost a lot of experience and basketball IQ through those guys. My biggest concern though, Britt, is — I feel like the mood of the team is good and I feel like we’ll be able to do things. Maybe we won’t be the smartest team in the league — I don’t know. But I feel like LaMelo has a really good feel for the game, Anthony’s feel for the game is improving all the time. My biggest concern is that Rudy lost a lot of allies. Guys who understood him, knew how to talk to him, could help him help us. And as I go into the season I am just conscious to make sure that there are people on the team that can still “speak Rudy.”
MP: I think that’s a really wise insight. What I noticed — and wrote — was that when Rudy was here before Mike had been acquired, he was like the stepfather in the locker room.
Finch: Right, right.
MP: Like a parent, but not really a blood relative. And now, he’s been in the household for a long time.
Finch: Yeah. [Shared laughter] Well, they’ve adopted him and he’s adopted them.
That is not to say he isn’t appreciated. Anthony leads the way, then Jaden and the other players, they all have an unbelievable appreciation for what he does and has done.
MP: He is who he is. And he’s a quirky guy.
Finch: He is who he is and he’s proud and he wants to do things a certain way. And that way is often the right way but sometimes he has to adjust to fit what the team needs in the moment. And there have to be guys that help bridge that gap.
But what happened in Paris this summer, I was most pleased about for Rudy. (The players gathered en masse in Rudy’s native France to bond on their own both on and off the court.) Because it was organic. He had been trying to make something like that happen for a number of years and just couldn’t get the take-up. And now Anthony was the driving force behind it. And LaMelo was a driving force behind it as a newbie here. And everybody ended up coming together. And that gives me great hope that we’ll figure out the Rudy piece within the team.
Coming up next week in part 3: Striking the right balance with recently acquired power forward Jonathan Kuminga, and a look at the roles of players coming off the bench.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.minnpost.com/sports/timberwolves/2026/09/chris-finch-interview-part-2-can-the-wolves-change-a-tigers-stripes-timberwolves-lamelo-ball/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”http://www.minnpost.com”>MinnPost</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/www.minnpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/favicon.png?fit=150%2C150″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”http://www.minnpost.com/?republication-pixel=true&post=2237842&ga4=3376753669″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “http://www.minnpost.com/sports/timberwolves/2026/09/chris-finch-interview-part-2-can-the-wolves-change-a-tigers-stripes-timberwolves-lamelo-ball/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/minnpost.com/p.js”></script>