Chris Finch
Chris Finch pulled the Timberwolves out of the wilderness to back-to-back Western Conference Finals, coaching a 2024 playoff run on a ruptured knee tendon.
The itinerant basketball lifer who wandered England, Germany, Belgium and the D-League before building the winningest era in Timberwolves history.
| Vitals | |
|---|---|
| Born | Nov. 6, 1969, in Cambridge, Ohio |
| College | Franklin & Marshall (Division III) |
| Before Minnesota | Sheffield (England), Great Britain national team, Rio Grande Valley Vipers (2010 D-League title); NBA assistant with Houston, Denver, New Orleans, Toronto |
| Hired | Feb. 22, 2021 (16th head coach in franchise history) |
| Predecessor | Ryan Saunders |
The hire nobody outside the building liked. When the Minnesota Timberwolves fired Ryan Saunders on Feb. 21, 2021, they had reached the playoffs just once since 2004 and were staggering toward another lottery finish. The next afternoon they plucked Chris Finch off the Toronto Raptors bench to replace him, and the speed was the problem. Then-president Gersson Rosas promoted an outside assistant over associate head coach David Vanterpool, who is Black; reporting at the time noted the hire bypassed a genuine search. The National Basketball Coaches Association issued a rare public rebuke; president Rick Carlisle and executive director David Fogel cited the need for “a level playing field and equal access to opportunity for all coaching candidates.” It was an ugly opening act for a coach who had earned his shot the hard way, and it hung over his first weeks in the job.
From Sheffield to the Rio Grande Valley. Finch’s résumé read like no other coach’s in the league. A Division III star at Franklin & Marshall, he chased the game to England as a player and stayed to coach the Sheffield Sharks, then wound through Germany and Belgium — the Giessen 46ers, Euphony Bree, and Dexia Mons-Hainaut — and took over the Great Britain national team. His American reintroduction came in the D-League, where he won a 2010 title with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and was named Coach of the Year, all while still running the British program. From there came NBA assistant stops in Houston, Denver, New Orleans and Toronto, an offensive specialist’s slow climb that finally reached a head chair at age 51.
Building the contender. The first full season was a jolt. In 2021-22 the Wolves went 46-36, won a play-in game, and pushed Memphis to six games in the first round, their first playoff trip since 2018. The next year brought a step back: a play-in win just to make the field, then a first-round exit to Denver in 2022-23. The arrival of Rudy Gobert had promised more, but the two-big lineup fit awkwardly at first. Then everything clicked. In 2023-24 Minnesota went 56-26, the second-best record in franchise history, with the NBA’s top-ranked defense built around the Gobert–Karl-Anthony Towns pairing, earning Finch a third-place finish in Coach of the Year voting behind winner Mark Daigneault. He coached the West in that February’s All-Star Game.
The breakthrough, and the knee. The 2024 playoffs delivered the signature run of his tenure and its strangest injury. Minnesota swept a Phoenix team fronted by Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal, but late in the fourth quarter of the Game 4 clincher on April 28, Finch ruptured the patellar tendon in his right knee when guard Mike Conley crashed into him on the sideline. He had surgery, then coached the second-round series against Denver seated on the bench with the leg immobilized, assistant Micah Nori roaming the sideline in his place. What that battered staff pulled off is now league lore: down 20 in the third quarter of Game 7 at Denver, the Wolves stormed all the way back to win 98-90, the largest comeback in a Game 7 in NBA history, knocking out the defending champions and reaching the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2004. Dallas ended the run in five, but the franchise had arrived, and in June the Wolves signed Finch to a multi-year extension reported to run through 2027-28.
Back to the conference finals, and still tinkering. Rather than fade, the 2024-25 group ran it back. Returning as the West’s sixth seed after an offseason blockbuster that swapped Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, the Wolves knocked off the Lakers and the Warriors to reach a second straight Western Conference Finals, where Oklahoma City, the eventual champion, closed them out in five. Two conference finals in two seasons, from a franchise that had won exactly two playoff series in its first thirty-five years of existence. The 2025-26 Wolves went 49-33 and beat Denver again in the first round before running into San Antonio, which knocked them out in the second round. In an offseason reshaped by the trade that brought in LaMelo Ball, Finch was candid about the fix he was after, telling the Road Trippin’ show that the Wolves “probably did Anthony a disservice last year, at times, playing him as a point guard.” The answer, he said, was to get Edwards “back to his natural position off the ball.”
By the numbers
Through the 2025-26 season, Finch is 258-193 as Timberwolves head coach, a .572 winning percentage that is the best of any coach in franchise history and second only to Flip Saunders (427-392) in total wins. Under him Minnesota made the playoffs in five straight full seasons, reached the second round three years running, and made back-to-back conference finals in 2024 and 2025.
Per Basketball-Reference, his Minnesota tenure by season:
| Season | Record | Playoffs |
|---|---|---|
| 2020-21* | 16–25 | Did not qualify |
| 2021-22 | 46–36 | Lost first round (Memphis, 2–4) |
| 2022-23 | 42–40 | Lost first round (Denver, 1–4) |
| 2023-24 | 56–26 | Lost conference finals (Dallas, 1–4) |
| 2024-25 | 49–33 | Lost conference finals (Oklahoma City, 1–4) |
| 2025-26 | 49–33 | Lost conference semifinals (San Antonio, 2–4) |
*Took over Feb. 22, 2021, replacing Ryan Saunders.
Wolves career totals
Franchise ranks
- 1st Win percentage (.572)
- 1st Playoff wins (27)
- 2nd Total wins (258, behind Flip Saunders' 427)
Per the all-time franchise leaderboard.
Accolades
- Back-to-back Western Conference Finals (2024, 2025)
- 2024 NBA All-Star Game head coach (West)
- Third in Coach of the Year voting (2023-24)
- 2010 NBA D-League championship and Coach of the Year (Rio Grande Valley)
Lore
The chair. A franchise’s best coaching season was nearly undone by a point guard’s momentum on the sideline, then rescued by a man barking instructions from a folding chair with his leg strapped straight. Finch ran the Denver series immobilized after surgery, Micah Nori handling the sideline, and the staff still delivered the largest Game 7 comeback in NBA history.
Bozos. His first career ejection came on Jan. 29, 2025, in Phoenix, after a report that he’d called the crew “bozos” under his breath. Finch insisted, straight-faced, that he’d only been chirping at Bradley Beal.
The Oklahoma City grudge. Finch’s grievances with how Minnesota’s games against the Thunder get officiated became a running theme, the one topic reliably capable of launching the game’s most even-keeled coach off the bench. In December 2025 he got tossed in the first quarter of a win over Oklahoma City and picked up a $35,000 fine for the outburst.
A route no one else took. Sheffield, a season in Giessen, the Belgian league, a D-League title in the Rio Grande Valley, and a Division III jump shot at Franklin & Marshall. Nobody else’s path to an NBA bench looks anything like it.
Two decades of wandering produced, by the numbers, the best coach Minnesota basketball has ever had.