Before the three-point revolution came to the NBA, before Karl-Anthony Towns staked his claim as the greatest shooting big man of all time, Chris Finch was working on the future of the sport across the Atlantic.
From 1997 to 2003, the Timberwolves coach led the Sheffield Sharks of the British Basketball League, earning two Coach of the Year awards with a rag-tag group of undersized bigs and speedy sharpshooters. Finch didn’t necessarily know he was taking part in the game’s transformation as he worked to build a winner in Europe.
“The reason we played that way is because it’s all we could afford,” Finch says. “We played in a hyperefficient system, but at the time I had never seen the math. It’s just what made sense for us.”
