The NBA All Star game is foremost about recognition, a nod that you are part of the event because of the extraordinary contribution you have brought to the art and craft of basketball.
In that spirit, Minnesota Timberwolves Head Coach Chris Finch handed the whiteboard over to some of his assistant coaches at various points during the game, so they could, in his words, “have a moment” to experience the privilege of drawing up plays for the Western Conference superstars of the sport.
When Finch got the nod to coach the West by the Wolves having the best record in the conference, he continually stressed it was an award for the organization – and coaching staff – as a whole. By all accounts, he is always eager to share the credit with his assistants and takes measures to further their careers.
“I have worked with (head) coaches where you bring him your information and then (in practice) he shouts it all out – offense, defense – while all the assistants just stand around. The players get numb hearing the same voice,” said assistant coach and defensive coordinator, Elston Turner.
“It needs to be different nowadays,” Turner continued. “When I was playing in Denver (in the 1980s) there was one assistant with Coach Doug Moe. There are a lot of voices at practice and in our meetings and Finch is comfortable with that. He delegates all these different areas and doesn’t look over your shoulder, trusts you to be a professional. I appreciate that.”
Indeed, one of the many reasons why the Wolves are experiencing one of the two most successful seasons in their 35-year existence is due to the ongoing breadth, depth and cohesion of their large cadre of assistant coaches and player development staff – 11 people in all. As we wait for the Wolves to embark upon the post-All Star portion of the schedule later this week, it seems like a good opportunity to describe their multifaceted operation.
At the head of the hierarchy is lead assistant Micah Nori, who likens himself to a bench coach in baseball, the right-hand man with a broad array of input and oversight. One focused area of responsibility is “special situations,” which is essentially crunch time or close-game circumstances that involve knowledge about both sides of the ball. Nori also sits beside Finch during every game and acts as a sounding board, advisor, and reminder of in-game details. And he is one of the seven staff members who create game-plans, or “scouts” – more on that in a minute.
The staff concentrating on the Wolves defense is pretty specialized. In addition to being the coordinator, Turner handles the elements involved in the half-court shell, which is mostly concerned with positional integrity. Corliss Williamson is responsible for transition defense and rebounding. Kevin Hanson handles all the vagaries of pick-and-roll defense. Max Lefevre is in charge of getting and organizing film clips of the Wolves on defense, in time frames that can range from the first half of a current game to tendencies over the previous week or two. And Chris Hines from the player development staff is the point person for zone defense.
On offense, the coordinator is Pablo Prigioni, who is also in charge of the execution of the sets and play calls. He is abetted by Jeff Newton, who, like Lefevre, is tasked with organizing film clips to pinpoint specific strengths and weaknesses. Newton is also involved in offensive “scouts,” and handles “action plays,” which break down five-player sets and schemes into two- and three-player interactions to drill down on improving the details.
The staff on the offensive side of the ball is not as large. Much of that is due to greater input by Finch – who is obviously the final arbiter on how both sides of the ball are managed, but is more schematically geared to the offense – and Nori. Defense is also a priority in the sense that it is where the Wolves have staked their identity.
The game plan, or “scout,” creates a specific strategy, backed by data, for each upcoming opponent. Veteran staff members usually get the more important assignments, and/or teams with which they are particularly familiar. For example, Nori has the defensive scout for three conference rivals, the Los Angeles Clippers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets, and notes that he got the nod on Denver because their coach and two best players (Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic) were already there when he was a part of the organization six years ago.
His research begins with the five-game scout; a detailed list of clips that indicate the abiding style and frequency of play calls during the opponents’ previous five contests, often compiled by Lefevre and Newton. That is accompanied by an auto-generated analytics report that runs about 15 pages, an incredibly detailed data source on tendencies, efficiency and trends for the opponent. From these two sources, the game-planner will drill down to specific strengths and weaknesses in how they match up, and come up with the all-important “three keys” to the game on both sides of the ball.
“What you want to do is tell a story about how this team is playing,” Nori stressed. And, thus, how to beat them. “In a perfect world, we’ll have watched enough and analyzed enough that we can say to the players, ‘If you do these three things, we will win the game.’”
Somewhere between what he calls “the rough draft and the final draft,” Nori takes his strategic plan to Turner, just as the offensive scout – most often Newton this season – is running it by Prigioni or Finch. The three keys, buttressed by a wealth of clips to augment it,” is agreed upon and the entire game plan is presented to the entire coaching staff the day of the game, where it can get further tweaked, and where the clips will be significantly edited down and presented to the players during 30-minute meeting before the pregame.
“You want to give them the headlines,” Nori said. “The 10 percent of the information you have gathered (and that has been subsequently culled by the coordinators and then the staff) that are the most important things.”
The complexities come at practice. Hanson describes how a hybrid of three defensive schemes is used to defend the small but supremely talented Clippers who rely on a lot of isolation offense. Pick-and-rolls are tweaked in a manner that tries to avoid Karl-Anthony Towns being switched on to a quicker matchup who is a potent scorer, and that enables Rudy Gobert to both be engaged in some pick and roll actions but also be free to roam in rim protection.
For opponents who thrive in transition, like the Thunder, Williamson may be in charge of specific drills during practice. If zone looks like a viable option, Hines might be running part of the practice.
The coaching and attention to detail never stops. Throughout the first half, Finch, Nori, Turner and Prigioni will all be calling out for Lefevre and Newton to grab the clip of just-completed play, for the way it provides an object lesson on how the Wolves are either sabotaging or honoring the game plan, especially at it relates to the three keys.
Right after halftime, the defensive and offensive staff are meeting separately, going over what specific clips they want to show the players. Time is precious and they usually can’t get more than four or five from each side of the ball, the majority of them critical, but the last one almost always a good example to send them back out on a high note.
After the game is over is when the coordinators become most prominent. Both Prigioni and Turner will deliver their postgame report cards to the entire team the day after the game via a meeting a film session, before Finch addresses the team. Chronic mistakes in certain areas can set the template for what gets emphasized in practice, and might influence how the upcoming game plan is honed.
Player development is also a key component of the Wolves system. Every player is assigned a staff member. Hansen has Naz Reid and Gobert, Hines has Anthony Edwards, Williamson has KAT, and so forth.
The staff most devoted to player development get assigned the players who need it the most, the folks who rarely get off the bench. Assistant Coach Joe Boylan, whose relationship with Finch goes back to when Finch was an assistant coach in New Orleans, is in charge of player development and believes his role and duties are easily misperceived.
Asked the most important lesson he has learned from his time on the job, Boylan responded, “To get to this level, players are highly competitive and they need a vehicle to express that. So giving them opportunities to compete to win to lose, something to talk trash about, something bragging rights, is important.
“Most people think of player development as one-on-zero drills; dribbling with flashing lights and cones. It is much more about one-on-one, three-on-three, five-on-five when we can get the coaches involved. It’s creating game situations.
“People think we are developing fundamental skills like dribbling, shooting and passing in little separate buckets and then they get reassembled once the game starts. But the fundamentals we develop are about attacking space, stepping to the ball, ripping away from the pass – little things that allow your skills to emerge.”
Boylan continued, “The other thing is the psychology of it. So much of what goes into a guy making a shot has less to do with his follow-through and more about how much sleep he got and what is going on in his personal life.”
Boylan is busiest before practice – getting those pickup games organized, catering to the early arrivals who need a partner feeding him balls or defending his shots, helping those returning from injury a gradual immersion into full-scale NBA action. That and the summer workouts, where he and his staff compile daily practice reports for players honing their games in the off-season. Summers are also when his own staff, who naturally have a yen to move up the coaching ladder, get more opportunities to grow. He proudly notes that Lefevre, who came up in player development, is Elston Turner’s understudy, and that the two frequently sit together on the plane, discussing strategy.
Which brings us full circle back to Finch, who creates an environment where everyone has input in meaningful meetings. Like Finch, Turner, Nori and Prigioni are not possessive about their standing and encourage participation. Nobody is caught in the silo of their specialty – Newton can chime in on the defense, Hanson can talk about offensive sets and the player development guys aren’t cowed into silence.
“We work well together. Nobody gets upset if somebody who is handling a different area comment on yours,” Turner confirmed. “And sometimes, you know, meetings are a little uneasy; that’s grown folks talking it out. We are all trying to win; that’s the bottom line. And being number one (in defensive rating), you can’t do much better than that.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Wolves assistant coach, Kevin Hanson.
Britt Robson
Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.
