A big question for Timberwolves’ Chris Finch: who will get point guard minutes?

This is the second of a four-part Q&A between Britt Robson and Minnesota Timberwolves Head Coach Chris Finch. You can read part one here.

In today’s segment Finch discusses managing minutes at the point guard position for the incumbent Mike Conley and whether Donte DiVincenzo seems suited for a role at the point. (The discussion about backup point guard Rob Dillingham will appear later this week.) 

The rest of this piece deals with various ways to improve offensive efficiency, via finishing better at the rim and emphasizing more cutting and more aggressive performance in transition.

Part three will appear on Thursday and the final portion will be up on Friday. Training camp to initiate the 2025-26 Timberwolves season will begin on Monday. 

MP: People looking at this Wolves team in a preseason snapshot would say that point guard is a position that needs to be strengthened in some shape or form. But when I look at the numbers Mike Conley had a low-key good year.

Finch: He had a great year. 

MP: The biggest problem I saw was that for some reason he couldn’t finish at the rim.

Finch: Yeah, his finishing dipped, for sure. His floater, which in past years had been automatic, kind of let him down. I do believe a lot of it was wrist-related — that is such a “touch” shot. Certainly at the beginning of the season it was wrist-related. Plus he was rusty; he wasn’t able to have his normal summer. (Conley aggravated a chronic soreness in his right wrist during the summer of 2024.)

Plus, Julius (Randle) is a high-volume ball-handler, where (Karl-Anthony Towns) wasn’t a high-volume handler. That (difference) forced the ball out of Mike’s hands a little bit and he didn’t know where to put himself at times. Julius was scoring more than creating. But once Julius was creating as much as scoring, Mike started making shots and became a secondary playmaker at a super-high level. That’s when it all kind of fit together.  

But Mike had a great year — he really did. The challenge with Mike is that we want to continue to manage his minutes and keep them on the lower side. But how do you start him and then finish with him and play him only 24 minutes a night? It is very, very hard. It is easier to fit 24 minutes into a 36-minute game than a 48-minute game.

MP: If you had to choose, you would rather finish with him than start with him, wouldn’t you?

Finch: Yeah. But I do think we have a bunch of options to finish with at times too. But if I had to pick one, yeah.

MP: It is a small sample size, but when Donte DiVincenzo started seven games at point guard when you made the switch early in the season, that worked out pretty well. Of course, you guys were going through adjustments and transitions so it is hard to rely on that sample.

Finch: I think that was something that happened at the time because we needed it, just to shake up the team a little bit. And what we don’t know — because Donte got hurt — so we don’t know what was real and sustainable. This has nothing to do with Donte. But this was at the very beginning of the time where the move forced Julius to be more of a playmaker because we needed one out there. So in that way it was real good.

MP: With Nickeil Alexander-Walker gone and Conley needing circumscribed minutes, do you envision Donte getting more time at point guard? Or do you like him better off the ball?

Finch: I like him better off the ball. Where we really like Donte and where I think he can fill in really well for Nickeil, is in creating pace. Nickeil was a really good “push guard,” he got the ball up and out of his hands relatively quickly. I think that suits how Donte likes to play and how he plays the best. I think he can help us there. But to rely on him to do any heavy ball-handling is probably not putting him in the best position for himself. 

I think that is where Jaden (McDaniels) can help us a little bit. And TJ (Shannon) has some Nickeil-like playmaking abilities in him. If they keep it simple and make the plays that are in front of them. I think they are guys we might be able to lean into a little bit more. 

MP: For whatever reason, Donte was another guy who didn’t finish well at the rim. He had a tendency to think about passing when he drove and then getting stuck under the rim.

Finch: Yeah.

MP: You guys were like 18^th in the NBA in two-point accuracy, and had a much higher percentage, relative to the league, in 3-point percentage. Do you worry about your interior shooting accuracy?

Finch: Yup. I worry about it. So much so that we have retooled our finishing program — how we look at finishing, our player-development pieces of it. Ant had a subpar finishing year, there is no real excuse for that. Donte and Mike, as you already mentioned. Naz (Reid) did, too. 

I think there were a lot of forced shots at the rim. But (the issue) was a little different for everyone. For Mike it was the floater. For Ant, I don’t know, it seemed to have left him. Maybe he didn’t pay enough attention to it in his own player development. That has been a priority — getting back to that for him. 

I think Donte’s problem was indecision — he was trying to find Rudy (Gobert) at times. And he was over-penetrating and putting himself in a position where he turned it over a lot, too, which is worse than the misses. 

But everybody had something unique to why they had their struggles and forced us to look at how we teach our finishing.

Related: Q&A: Timberwolves’ Chris Finch on how continuity will be key to team’s success

MP: So, if it is not a state secret, what specifically are you looking at? 

Finch: I think we have to simplify some things. Angles. Physicality: I think in the league right now you have to be a “hit first” finisher. Not an avoidance guy. I think at times we try to be too skill-based and not enough strength-based. Ant is so athletic and has used that athleticism his whole life to try and avoid the contact at the finish rather than finishing through the contact. Or initiating the contact. The league now lets you almost shove off on your way to the hoop. So we might as well try that.

I think with Donte, it is taking out that indecision. Some of it is more than just finishing. We call it “deep-paint decisionmaking.” Like, what do you do when you get there? With Naz, maybe more of it has to be kick-outs (passes to teammates), because a lot of what he was doing were running, contested shots that were really hard. With Donte, a lot of them were turnovers. So if you just take away those bad decisions, then your finishing (accuracy) is going to go up.

MP: Another thing in terms of structure on offense — a year ago you talked about players making more cuts to the hoop (off the ball). Like your problems with not seeking to score enough in transition, it is a fairly chronic bugaboo. Is the problem there that Rudy has to either be in the dunker’s spot or screening, which both discourage cutting? When you guys did utilize cuts you had a very high efficiency. Is there a way to increase it?

Finch: Yeah there is a way. But in the NBA it is one of those sacrificial actions. Most cutting doesn’t lead to anything for yourself. More often than not it basically opens up the floor behind you. So you just have to get guys to buy into the greater good there. 

But the way we are constructed, we probably have to lean more into a spread offense around Rudy than a super fluid one. I would prefer that we were a really good cutting team. Because I think cutting demonstrates an IQ, and demonstrates an anticipation, demonstrates sacrificing for your teammates. There is a lot of intrinsic value in cutting. And you are doing things because it is the right basketball play. 

The problem is that there are spacing issues around it sometimes, and you have a lot of high-volume guys who are used to having the ball in their hands; and they are reluctant cutters.

The challenge is how do we get Ant to cut more? How do we get Julius to cut more? How do we get these guys, with their gravity, how would that change the geometry on the floor, so not only themselves, but everyone can benefit?

So it will be a point of emphasis. We have a lot of freedom and randomness in our offense. So it is very hard to have these programmed cuts that don’t reveal themselves naturally. But we are looking into putting in more mandatory cutting rules. It is a point of emphasis for our offense, as is re-establishing ourselves in transition.

MP: Could both of those things be leaned into more with the second unit?

Finch: Yeah absolutely. 

MP: Given that you have TJ — 

Finch: Jaylen and Jaden. Yeah we do have players who are actually good cutters.

MP: So cutting does seem like the so-called “low-hanging fruit” for the offense, if you can bring it together with certain personnel. 

Finch: Yes, but one of my problems with cutting, if you look at the metrics of cutting, I am not sure what they are defining as cutting, right? 

MP: Same with transition, right?

Finch: Yeah, but transition is usually related to a clock, which I don’t necessarily value in the same way. But cutting dynamics — if I drive and Rudy cuts from the dunker’s spot off my drive, is that a cutting play or a dunker play? 

When we started going through, “OK, find the clips that relate to the cutting,” with these metrics that they are using, I look and (say), “I don’t know if that is really cutting.” 

MP: They are thinking the classic cutting, Golden State with the weakside baseline cuts, like the old Utah with Jerry Sloan.

Finch: Right. Constant movement, exactly. So it is very difficult (to define otherwise). When you look at the best cutting teams (and) the rate that they cut, it is really low anyway.

MP: Eight percent or something like that.

Finch: Yeah. So I don’t know. But when I watch us play, I think, “well, we cut more than that.” Again, I don’t know what it leads to. 

MP: Let’s go back to transition for a moment. There are some of the same issues in that you told me last year that when you get out and run in transition you are helping the team but you often are not rewarded. Rudy is a classic case of that.

Finch: Yeah, of course.

MP: We know that Ant likes to hang back and gather himself and survey the court for a half-court play instead of pushing. Does the ball have to go to Ant when a defensive rebound is made? And if it does anyway, is this one of those instances where you have to cajole Ant rather than order Ant to make the right play?

Finch: (laughs). A couple things. First of all, transition in and of itself is a “love of the game” play. Just like cutting, whether or not you get the ball, you’ve got to do it because the game depends on it. 

The specifics of our transition are this: It is more than just Ant. We get a rebound, and three guys would go back for the outlet (pass off the defensive rebound). We were top five in playing backwards — we actually would pass backwards a lot. That’s what you do in soccer. That’s not what you do in basketball. 

We’ve got to clean up our outlets and our spacing around that. Of course we want Ant to have the ball. But trying to get him to understand, too, that if you always want to bring the ball up, you are always going to face the most loaded defense, particularly if you are bringing it up at half-speed. 

Two, when he does have the ball I think there needs to be more of a fire-out mentality and then survey, rather than try and survey and then punch one gap. I think you create advantage first, then use your change of speed and make the play that needs to be made, whether for you or your teammate. Again, that just takes a little more commitment to doing it. 

The last two Western Conference Finals, both (opposing) teams have sold out with two or three bodies in the gap. That’s a trained behavior (bringing the ball up slowly) and you can’t all of a sudden go to it (firing-out) to get those six easy points or so that you need. You have to be used to doing it all the time. 

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Other transition habits that we have to have for our benefit are, I think we can find Julius in an early post-up way more often than we have. We have to be more intentional about finding him. He needs to be more intentional about establishing good position. He would run and be open, but then he would pull to the corners, space the floor immediately a lot. 

And then I think the spacing between Julius and Rudy needs to change; they kind of would collapse on each other — we’d have two guys running to the rim and then nobody running to the rim. We need a little bit more recognition there. 

But primarily, yeah, we’ve got to quit this bad habit where everybody goes back to get the ball and bring it up. Some of it is largely on me, because, you know, Mike is a point guard, so he wanted the ball. We are asking Julius to push more, and then Ant wants the ball in his hands. So we have to establish what the hierarchy is there when we are out and running. 

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