Timberwolves Head Coach Chris Finch: "The Western Conference finals started. Not sure if they got the memo. But they got it this afternoon."

One of the great things about Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch is that he is always willing to give his team an honest and, when needed, brutal assessment of their performance. In a film session Thursday, he laid into the team after watching their Game 1 loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference finals.

In what may be the best coach quote of the NBA playoffs, he said the following: "The Western Conference finals started. Not sure if they got the memo. But they got it this afternoon."

"We're the No. 1 defensive team in the league so the amount of points we allowed, 108, is too much for that team," TimberWolves backup big man and NBA 6th Man of the Year Naz Reid said Thursday. "I just think we didn't bring it defensively. I think that's pretty much what it is. Sixty points in the paint, 40 of them in the first half, that's just simple."

WHAT THE FINCH SAYS:
"It was a rough film session," Finch said matter-of-factly. "I told the guys, 'It's been a long time since I've been this disappointed in your effort. Your performance, your attitude, your application and attention to detail just wasn't there.' The Western Conference finals started. Not sure if they got the memo. But they got it this afternoon."

"I said to our guys, 'We're 3-3 at home, and we've had two kind of similar performances coming off stints of success,'" Finch said. "There's a lot of ways immaturity kind of rears its head, and this might be one of them. But they've got our attention now, so there's no reason for us to be feeling ourselves."

"I'm sure we'll come out and play better," Finch said. "It's hard to imagine that we're going to play much worse. But there's lots of things that I'm sure Dallas is going to look to adjust to as well, so every one of these games has a personality of its own."

THE UNDERRATED OPINION
It wasn't surprising that the Timberwolves came out flat and looked tired during Game 1. You must remember they went to war with the Nuggets in a 7-game series, and teams normally play the first game of the next round a little flat. Still, the Wolves could have won the first game if they had adjusted sooner to the Luka Doncic focal point strategy that the Mavs ran to near perfection in the 4th quarter. Another area of improvement that I'm sure Finch covered extensively was the lack of hustle by the Wolves getting back on defense, as in the 2nd half, they allowed fastbreak after fasterback to materialize.

I'm sure Finch will have his players and his coaching staff ready to go for game two on Friday night, but if the Timberwolves drop game 2 because of lack of effort, the next film session will be even more brutal.