Chris Finch remains unhappy with the Timberwolves' late-game, stalling offense

Feb. 7—The Timberwolves, statistically speaking, have had the best offense in the NBA since the calendar flipped to 2022. The offensive success has been built on ball movement and activity — staples of coach Chris Finch's system — all of which makes them difficult to guard and leads to easy looks at the rim and from 3-point range.

For roughly 40 minutes each night, the Minnesota offense looks like a finely-tuned machine.

Unless the Timberwolves have a semi-comfortable lead late in a game. Then everything shuts down. As it did in Detroit last Thursday, when Minnesota watched a 16-point fourth-quarter lead shrink to five points on multiple occasions in the closing minutes.

Even on Sunday, as the Timberwolves put the game away with buckets on three-consecutive possessions, it wasn't because of spectacular offensive execution. D'Angelo Russell made a tough look on the baseline as the shot clock expired, Killian Hayes fouled Russell on a tough look from 3-point range, and then a Karl-Anthony Towns offensive rebound led to free throws for Anthony Edwards.

Nothing about it was crisp or well-executed.

The late-game offensive showings — which only rear their heads when the Timberwolves look as though they're on the doorstep of victory — clearly frustrate Finch. There is only one such instance that pops out where his team lost a game because of it, when it let a double-digit fourth-quarter lead against Memphis slip. But there have been other close calls.

In Minnesota's road win early in the season over Milwaukee, the Timberwolves scored just two points over a five-plus minute span late in the fourth quarter to allow the Bucks back into the game.

More recently, the Timberwolves took a nine-point lead with 3 minutes, 29 seconds to play in Portland, and then did not score again until the Blazers had to foul Russell with 15 seconds to play.

You won't find much in terms of numbers to display the issue — because it would be such a specific subset of date to calculate how a team performs offensively when up eight to 12 points with fewer than five minutes to play — but Minnesota's performance under such circumstances does not pass the eye test, and it could cost the Timberwolves an important game or two over the final third of the season.

Finch has identified a lack of ball movement and a refusal to get into the sets earlier in the clock as the primary issues. It has been a point of contention for much of the season.

"It's the same things we've been preaching all the time. We have to move the ball earlier," Finch said. "Same culprits."

Surely, if the Timberwolves were able to iron out the rest of their offensive issues over the course of the season, this will correct itself, as well. Right?

"Yeah, I mean right now we just run the clock too much for no reason," Finch said. "I gotta have another conversation and find out why we do it."

That's a conversation likely reserved for Edwards, Russell and Towns. As they've come to realize this season, "stall" isn't an effective closeout tactic.

"I think that's kind of our problem: We be trying to use the clock. But we gotta stop doing that, we just gotta go. That's what coach be trying to tell us. Like, 'just go, just play the game the same way,' " Edwards said. "Because we be thinking, 'Yeah, run the clock, but that don't never work in our favor.' "