DENVER (AP) — Timberwolves coach Chris Finch hasn’t gotten over the free-throw disparity in his team’s series-opening loss to the Denver Nuggets.
“Maybe we ought to start flopping, too,” Finch said before Game 2 on Monday night.
More specifically, he was agitated about Jamal Murray going 16 for 16 from the free-throw line. Finch called Murray’s 16 attempts a “head scratcher” after Minnesota’s 116-105 loss Saturday, when the Wolves shot 19 free throws.
Murray said after the game he didn’t know what the fuss was all about because he was repeatedly fouled by the physical Timberwolves.
“What do you want me to say? They weren’t all fouls. Some of them were fouls,” Finch said Monday. “The league’s in a place right now where you draw the contact, and you spill away, and you get rewarded. Guys who try to play through contact, that first level of contact, and stay with the drive and all that, they tend not to be rewarded.”
His standout players Julius Randle and Anthony Edwards fit into that category, suggested Finch.
“Julius is not a flopper. Ant is not a flopper,” Finch said. “Those are physical drivers. They play through the first line of contact a lot.”
Asked if players in the league get coached to embellish contact, Finch responded: “We don’t coach it. Certainly guys figure out how to game the game. These guys are smart. They’re incredibly talented, skilled guys, have a ton of body control, ball skill, so they’re just playing to what the officials are allowing them to do.”
Finch added he’s “not sure how to answer that to our guys, sometimes, when they get frustrated. But we’ve got to do a better job.”
Nuggets David Adelman pointed out that some of Murray’s trips to the line were because of flagrant and technical fouls by Minnesota in a physical Game 1.
“It’s the playoffs,” Adelman said. “Everybody politicks after games.”
It’s a different officiating crew for Game 2.
“That’s the cool part about officiating, in all sports, is that every game is kind of unique to itself, and you have to react to what those six eyes see,” Adelman said. “It changes every night.
“I do think sometimes when you watch the film, you just say, ‘Yeah, that guy got fouled.’ There are nights, believe me, we play … somebody who shoots a lot of free throws, I don’t go back to the clips and say, ‘I can’t believe we got all those calls.’ I go, ‘Why are we fouling them so much?’”
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