What Chris Finch's Media Day Remarks Mean for Timberwolves' Season

One year ago, the Minnesota Timberwolves held their annual Media Day, and almost all of the narratives centered around continuity as the Wolves brought back seven of their top eight players, including all five of their starters.

The goal was for the team to hit the ground running and improve on a team the season prior that had an up-and-down regular season and ended up with only 49 wins and the sixth seed. The exact opposite happened, and the Wolves' performance quickly became stale. They immediately grew uninterested in the regular season and settled for another 49-win season as the sixth seed.

At this season's Media Day, Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch admitted last year's team tended to flip their intensity level up or down throughout the course of the season.

"Some of that was related to just our frustrations and the personality of last year's team," Finch said. "The team that had been together for a couple years and, at times, played bored, and we talked a lot about that."

Finch immediately followed up on that about where his team stands 12 months later, saying, "I don’t think that’s the case here. There’s nothing taken for granted with this team.”

Breaking down what Chris Finch said at Timberwolves Media Day

That will be the challenge for Finch and his staff with a roster that is greatly changed from the one they had last season. Power forwards Julius Randle are gone and in their place are a potential star in LaMelo Ball and a somewhat outcast Jonathan Kuminga. Veteran leaders Mike Conley, Joe Ingles, and Kyle Anderson are also no longer around, signing elsewhere in the offseason.

In total, the Wolves have five new players on the roster, plus Ayo Dosunmu, who will be going through his first training camp in Minnesota after the Wolves acquired him at last year's trade deadline. That is a fairly high amount of turnover for a team with as much recent success as the Timberwolves.

The importance of getting everyone on the same page before the regular season begins is not lost on Finch, who sees training camp as the time when an NBA team can create a foundation.

"We're going to go back to the beginning and a lot of the fundamentals," Finch explained. "Stuff that we’ve been able to not ignore, but move through quicker, with so much continuity in the roster the last few years. Level-set some stuff—expectations and standards for those new guys.”

LaMelo Ball at media day — Sep 28, 2026; Minnesota, MN, USA; Minnesota Timberwolves guard LaMelo Ball (1) poses for a photograph on the team's media day at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The work a team does during training camp and the preseason bleeds into the regular season and eventually the playoffs. It all stacks on top of each other, and very rarely does high-level success come in the modern NBA when a team skips any of the steps.

The best Timberwolves team during this Anthony Edwards era came in 2023-24. That season, the Timberwolves won 56 games during the regular season and also played well in the preseason, winning all five of their games.

“I think one of the best preseasons we had was a couple of years ago [in 2023-24]," Finch noted. "I think was the year we got off to a pretty hot start, like 17-4, and our team in the preseason gave me a little bit of the same vibes this season.”

While that year's team came up short against the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals, that team remains the closest the Timberwolves have been to the NBA Finals in the past 20 years. They had much more of an ability to adjust to their opponent, which allowed them to eliminate the defending champion Denver Nuggets after losing the middle three games of the series.

Despite a pair of lackluster regular seasons, the Wolves have played incredibly well in the playoffs over the past two seasons. They won a total of three series in that span, two of which came as sizable underdogs.

When the rubber met the road, though, and the Wolves came up against true championship contenders who presented matchup difficulties and disadvantages, Minnesota was unable to make the necessary adjustments as their seasons unceremoniously ended in blowouts.

The Wolves' unwillingness to embrace the preseason and regular season has been one of their worst traits. They've had talented rosters, but were unable to maximize their output as they dragged through the long 82-game season.

“The regular season is where you find your identity, and your identity carries you almost most nights," Finch stated. "You also have to use the regular season to be able to figure out what you're good at and what you might need as a curveball come the playoffs."

That curveball Finch mentions is what the Wolves have been lacking for the past few seasons. They have had a lot of talented players who work fairly well together and have won a good number of games with their fastball, but have not been able to adjust mid-series or show their opponent another look that makes them feel off balance.

To do that, it requires a team to have a bedrock of knowledge about themselves. That level of understanding cannot be found late in the season or in the playoffs; it needs to be learned throughout the course of the season.

Finch and the Timberwolves clearly expect this season to be a whole lot different, from the players on the roster to their mindset about the long NBA journey ahead of them. It'll be up to them to put it all into action starting Tuesday with the start of training camp.

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