How Chris Finch’s Pennsylvania roots led him to coaching the Minnesota Timberwolves

Finch's first basketball influences — along with his “Southeast Pennsylvania sensibilities” such as competitiveness, passion and sarcasm — have helped him rise up the coaching ranks.

Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch has plenty of experience — and Southeastern Pennsylvania roots — to lean on.Read moreRusty Jones / AP

by Gina Mizell

Published March 7, 2023, 5:01 a.m. ET

As a child, Chris Finch would travel from Reading to South Philly on Sunday afternoons to watch his beloved 76ers play at the Spectrum. He sat in the Palestra stands for Big 5 tripleheaders with his best friend, whose father was a La Salle graduate. He once hated Kevin McHale — creating some hilarious banter when McHale hired him as an assistant with the Houston Rockets — and still loves the Eagles.

The Minnesota Timberwolves coach, whose latest matchup against the Sixers arrives Tuesday night at the Target Center, boasts a circuitous coaching resumé he describes as “interesting and eventful.” The journey has taken him from professional leagues in England, Germany, and Belgium to what was then the D-League and through the NBA as an assistant before becoming the Timberwolves’ head coach in the middle of the 2020-21 season.

Yet his first basketball influences — along with his “Southeast Pennsylvania sensibilities” such as competitiveness, passion, and sarcasm — are rooted in his upbringing, which he still carries while navigating an up-and-down Timberwolves season.

“That really built the foundation for my love of the game and my desire to want to coach,” Finch said in a phone conversation with The Inquirer last week. " … All the things that make that part of the country so unique, that’s never going to leave me.”

The 53-year-old Finch credits some of his early coaches with instilling his mentality, as well as basketball fundamentals and strategy. While in middle school, Dave Stafford, then an assistant at Wilson High School, “took me under his wing and drove me all over, from Harrisburg to Philly,” to play against the best available competition. Reggie Weiss, Wilson’s head coach, taught Finch that basketball is “a simple game that has to be played really, really well.” The legendary Glenn Robinson, who became Division III’s all-time winningest coach while guiding Franklin & Marshall for 48 seasons, allowed for freedom and creativity within situational basketball.

Weiss, meanwhile, described Finch as a small forward who could shoot, get to the basket, and be a sometimes-too-unselfish distributor.

“He was always looking for other people to get the ball to,” Weiss told The Inquirer, “and I used to think, ‘Just shoot the ball.’ … He draws people to him, and he gets them to play hard. The kids around him that played with him in high school, they played real hard for each other — and especially for him.”

Finch first vocalized his interest in coaching to a Franklin & Marshall assistant while on a bus trip to a game and received the validation that “kind of gave me the freedom to be able to pursue it.” He initially went overseas to play for the Sheffield Sharks of the British Basketball League, but at age 27 was offered a coaching position with the team.

He naturally found himself modeling his concepts after those early coaches — “They’ve worked everywhere I’ve ever been, so why wouldn’t they work at the professional level?” he concluded — while infusing his own beliefs en route to winning the league’s Coach of the Year in 1998-99. Finch later coached the Giessen 46ers in Germany and two teams in Belgium, Euphony Bree and Dexia Mons-Hainaut. He took Dexia Mons-Hainaut to the final of the 2007-08 FIBA EuroCup, a tournament of 38 teams from 23 countries that, at the time, was regarded as the third-strongest in Europe.

Along the way, Finch quickly learned he needed to temper his fiery demeanor and become more of a problem solver. Though coaching in an overseas league meant Finch had more say in roster-building, the more limited resources and staff size made daily prioritization critical. Ditto for adaptability because, as Finch described, “you might play in Russia and some place up against the Ural Mountains, and you have no idea what you’re walking into before you get there.”

Those lessons also were applicable while Finch was head coach of the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, because rosters constantly changed as top players were called up to the NBA and signed or prospects from the parent club were sent down to develop. Finch was the league’s Coach of the Year in 2010, leading the Vipers to the championship while mastering a modern style of pace-and-space offense that shot a barrage of three-pointers.

Finch was hired by the Rockets as an assistant coach in 2011, before stints with the Denver Nuggets (2016-17), New Orleans Pelicans (2017-20), and Toronto Raptors (2020-21). Midway through that season with the Raptors, however, the Timberwolves made a rare in-season move to hire Finch for his first NBA head-coaching job.

In that role, Finch recognizes the importance of building individualized relationships with each player while simultaneously generating a collective team dynamic.

“Giving them as much freedom and accountability as you can,” Finch said. “Because these guys are great players, and getting out of the way and letting them be great is one of the things I think you have to master as a coach at this level.”

The Timberwolves were one of the NBA’s feel-good stories last season, beating the Los Angeles Clippers in the play-in tournament before falling in an entertaining first-round series against the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies. This season, however, has required the Timberwolves to “reinvent themselves several times,” prompting Finch to again lean into the flexibility he developed throughout his career.

The shifts began with the stunning summer blockbuster trade for three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert, forming an unconventional core with fellow All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns and rising star Anthony Edwards. It initially was a clunky fit before Towns sustained a calf injury that has kept him out since late November. Minnesota has hovered around .500 for the majority of the season, yet enters Tuesday’s game against the Sixers at 34-32, on a three-game winning streak, and in sixth place in the Western Conference.

As Finch moved up the coaching ranks, people back home reached out to “reconnect in a genuine way,” he said.

When Weiss pops into games at Wilson High School these days, he is often peppered with questions such as, “Did you see what Chris did?” During Finch’s season with the Nuggets, a former Wilson teammate organized an overnight group trip to New York City to watch him coach against the Knicks inside Madison Square Garden. When Finch returns to town, he regularly carves out time for dinners with Weiss and childhood friends — and is greeted by large crowds whenever he coaches inside the Wells Fargo Center.

Those gestures are evidence of the bonds Finch created as a sports-crazy kid in Southeastern Pennsylvania and the power of the coaches who fostered them. That’s why, whenever Finch coaches against the Sixers, he still gives himself a few seconds right before tipoff to reflect and appreciate.

“I’m living my dream,” Finch said. " … I just think to myself how lucky I am. I do let the moment happen, just because, if not, I’ll look back and I’ll have not had a full experience of it.

“When you’ve had the journey that I’ve had, you don’t take anything for granted.”