Chris Finch: 'It's time' for Timberwolves to 'grow up offensively'
The Timberwolves beat the Dallas Mavericks 118-110 Thursday night at Target Center, but if you hadn’t watched the game and instead just listened to coach Chris Finch’s postgame press conference, you might’ve thought they had lost.
Finch wasn’t pleased with the team’s offense, particularly its propensity to turn the ball over. The Wolves had 22 turnovers, 15 of which came in the first half. So, despite hitting on 60% of their shots from the field and 70% from 3-point range in the half, the Wolves took just a five-point lead over the Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving-less Mavericks into the halftime break.
“Fifteen turnovers, that’s more turnovers than your local corner bakery on a Saturday morning,” Wolves assistant coach Micah Nori said during a halftime television interview.
The Wolves looked frustrated at times in the offense, particularly in the second quarter when a few foul calls didn’t go their way. Dallas jumped on that discombobulation and used it to take a one-point lead on two separate occasions in the third quarter.
After the Mavericks took those leads, Anthony Edwards took over, scoring 18 of his season-high 44 points in the third frame as the Wolves jumped back ahead by seven entering the fourth.
Edwards was aggressive throughout Thursday’s game, something intentional because he had felt he left “bullets in the chamber” during Tuesday’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
While he certainly made up for the early missteps, it was also Edwards who turned the ball over more than anyone Thursday. He had six of the Wolves’ 22 turnovers. Minnesota’s second-biggest star, Karl-Anthony Towns, recorded the next most in the game with five.
“I think everyone at times is a little too worried about getting their own offense going,” Finch said postgame. “Ant had a hot start, so we gotta ride that hot start, but when that hot start’s over, then you got to start making plays. And other people, if they haven’t touched the ball for a little while, they can’t just decide that they’re going to put their head down and go to the hoop or they’re just gonna jack it because they haven’t shot it for a little while.
“And it’s everybody that had done that at one point in time. I thought the end of the second quarter in particular we all were having a pity party for ourselves.”
Turnovers and poor ball movement at times throughout games have been issues that Finch has been stressing all season long. And those same issues were also a problem during Tuesday’s loss in Oklahoma City.
And it was the Wolves’ biggest stars, Towns and Edwards, who were the biggest offenders then, too. Towns had five turnovers in that game, and Edwards had four.
“They have great freedom, maybe too much, and that’s on me, but they have great freedom and they have a responsibility to make the game easy for everybody,” Finch said. “… When you have guys who are natural-born scorers, sometimes if they’re not scoring, they don’t feel like they’re impacting the game.”
While noting the team did get 25 points from the charity stripe Thursday against Dallas, Finch expressed frustration with the team only recording 23 assists on a night they scored 118 points. He would’ve preferred the Wolves to have upwards of 30.
“We just gotta stop playing in crowds, make the extra play, make the extra pass, little stuff like that. Same stuff (Finch has) been talking about, we just gotta do it,” Edwards said.
Kyle Anderson said the Mavericks’ switch-heavy defense was part of the reason for the early offensive struggles as they took away the pick-and-roll, and that the Wolves needed to play with more pace and make the right play, a sentiment echoed by everyone who talked postgame.
“I think guys are trying to make the right play,” Anderson said. “But it’s just one of those nights where they were a good active team, got their hands on some balls. I think we do have to maybe focus on not playing in a crowd so much and getting off it early and that will help clean up the things.”
The good news, which Anderson noted, is that despite not having played their best yet this season and having some issues to work through on the offensive end, the Wolves are still winning. Thursday’s win improved their record to 13-1 on the Target Center court and Minnesota remains in first place in the Western Conference with a 23-7 record, a game and a half up on the Denver Nuggets.
“There’s a lot of ways to be mature and generally this team has been very mature, but we’ve got to grow up offensively, it’s time,” Finch said.
