MINNESOTA'S MISSTEP

 

The Minnesota Timberwolves’ hiring of its new head coach, Chris Finch, was strange. Plenty of teams have fired their coaches midway through the season, especially, like in Minnesota’s case, when the team has more than three times the number of losses than it does wins. However, it is rare for teams to name a new head coach in the middle of the season, especially in less than twenty-four hours of firing their previous head coach - Ryan Saunders. Yet this is exactly what Minnesota did. Minnesota’s hiring of Chris Finch was rushed and portrays the organization as being poorly led.

Although both Finch and Saunders are white, there is a level of hiring due diligence that is expected in professional sports. Part of this due diligence is the expectation and, in some cases like the NFL with  the rule, that teams will interview a diverse panel of candidates for head coaching and front office positions. Minnesota failed to conform with that industry standard. The National Basketball Coaches’ Association stated, in response to Minnesota’s hiring process, “[I]t is our responsibility to point out when an organization fails to conduct a thorough and transparent search of candidates from a wide range of diverse backgrounds.”

This failure for Minnesota to conduct a proper hiring is shocking due to the climate that the NBA has built. According to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (“TIDES”), the NBA, in 2019, scored an A+ in terms of their head coach diversity, with 26.6% of NBA head coaches being non-white.  For comparison, the NFL scored a dismal D+ in the same TIDES report. The Timberwolve’s rushed hiring of Chris Finch puts into question the true efficacy of the NBA’s TIDES grade and by extension the NBA’s true feelings towards ensuring equity in their hiring practices.

The NBA is also the most vocal league in terms of social justice awareness. In the 2020 Playoffs, which were held exclusively in Orlando due to COVID-19, the players in Orlando voluntarily and abruptly forfeited a day of playoff games in order to bring awareness to the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Subsequently the NBA’s players and owners worked together to start social justice initiatives, such as allowing NBA arenas to be used as voting centers during the 2020 Presidential Election. The fact that a league that promoted social and racial equality failed to properly ensure that one of its franchises follow proper hiring protocols dampens the message league is claiming to portray.

Before moving any further it is important to note that your correspondent is not trying to suggest that Finch is not worthy of being an NBA head coach. He was a finalist for the Timberwolves head coaching position in 2018 before Minnesota chose to go with Saunders. Finch also has vast NBA experience. He spent  time as an assistant coach with the New Orleans Pelicans and Toronto Raptors. What your correspondent is trying to suggest is that the NBA failed to uphold the values, such as diversity, that it has aggressively marketed and that the Timberwolves unnecessarily moved too fast in making their head coaching hire.

The Timberwolves are a young team with a high ceiling. Their team is built around “do-it all” big-man, Karl-Anthony Towns and a highly talented point guard, D'Angelo Russel. Minnesota also has the extremely young and extremely talented rookie, Anthony Edwards. Furthermore, the Timberwolves are likely to have a top five lottery selection in the upcoming NBA Draft. The Timberwolves have assets to create a competitive head coaching hiring process.

Moreover, the Timberwolves would have been able to get a full view of the available and well-suited head coaching candidates if they waited until season’s end to hire a coach. In the meantime, the Timberwolves could have promoted an assistant coach, such as David Vanterpool, whom Portland Trail Blazers’ guard, Daminan Lillard, thought should have been given the nod. The promotion of an interim head coach, who was previously an assistant coach under the terminated head coach, is par for the course. J.B. Bickerstaff was promoted as the interim head coach after the Cleveland Cavaliers fired John Beilein during the season. Nate McMillan was named the interim head coach of the Atlanta Hawks, just this week, after the Hawks let Lloyd Pierce go.

The promotion of an interim head coach, especially in a season that is a lost cause like the Timberwolves are experiencing is an act of responsibility. The promotion of an interim head coach clearly shows that the organization is sending a message that they wish to exhaust all of their avenues before naming a new head coach. Additionally, naming an interim head coach is a way for the organization to, odd as it sounds, salute their now terminated head coach. In promoting an interim head coach, the organization is also showing that they were fully committed to the team and head coach and had no other choice but to terminate the head coach. The Timberwolves’ firing of Saunders was needed, but the subsequent record pace at which the Timberwolves hired Chris Finch smelled the same as a husband divorcing his wife of five years in the morning and posting selfies with his new “bae” by dinner.

Like adultery, an organization “cheating” on its head coach doesn’t just affect the head coach, but also inadvertently creates collateral damage. The collateral damage in this case is, first and foremost, the young players who compose the Timberwolves and by extension the value of diversity and equality that the NBA puts so much effort into promoting.