‘They chose us’: Chris Finch reveals the bulletin-board fuel that powered Wolves past Nuggets

All series, Nuggets fans were sure their team had been gifted bulletin-board material, it turns out that the material was hanging in Chris Finch's locker room

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

Apr 30, 2026, 11:40 PM

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All series, Denver Nuggets fans were sure their team had been gifted bulletin-board material.

After Game 2, Jaden McDaniels stood at a podium and called the Nuggets a roster full of “bad defenders,” singling out several players by name. Cue the outrage, the radio rants and the assumption that Denver, the proud former champion, would surely take it personally and use it to flip the series.

It turns out the bulletin board was hanging in the wrong locker room.

“Denver had the chance to pick who they wanted to play coming down the stretch, and they chose us,” Chris Finch said after the Minnesota Timberwolves closed out the Nuggets in six games on Thursday night. “We used that as motivation all the way through preparation and through the series. They chose us. They didn’t have to choose us. They chose us, and our guys were up for the challenge of that.”

The Nuggets, who closed the regular season on a 12-game winning streak, had a real chance to maneuver their seeding and pick a different first-round opponent when they took the floor in San Antonio a few weeks ago. Denver could have set itself up to play the Houston Rockets — a team that hasn’t looked strong for months and was in a dogfight with a banged-up, LeBron James-led Lakers team in round one.

Instead, the Nuggets won with a bunch of backups and got the Wolves. The team that had just bounced them in 2024. The team they’d traded haymakers with for the past decade. The team Finch and his guys would now make sure they’d regret picking.

And the Nuggets knew it.

“They got up to play us, they were excited to play us,” Jamal Murray said. “We gotta want it more, I got respect for those guys.”

Cameron Johnson denied the narrative, saying players are always going to play hard and not tank.

“We have a group of guys,” Johnson said. “They’re fighting for their careers, fighting for their lives. They’re never gonna lay down. It’s not about seeking a matchup, it’s about winning the games that come our way””

But what’s Johnson’s post-series quote worth when Minny felt slighted.

To drive home just how absurd the punishment was: Finch closed Denver out Thursday with a starting five of Mike Conley, Terrence Shannon Jr., Jaden McDaniels, Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert — a group that had logged a grand total of six minutes together during the regular season and zero in the playoffs. With Anthony Edwards, Donte DiVincenzo, Ayo Dosunmu and Kyle Anderson all unavailable, Finch threw a lineup he’d never really used at the wall — and watched it work.

Finch didn’t just out-prepare Adelman emotionally. He out-coached him in every direction the game can be coached.

On Xs and Os, Finch made the call to lean into a triple-big lineup of Gobert, Randle and Reid that the Wolves had only run for 123 possessions all season — but at a +29.3 net rating. He saved it. He waited for the right matchup. And then, with two of his best guards out, he played it to much success.

“I knew I wanted to get to it as much as I possibly could,” Finch said. “I wanted to get my best players on the floor. Sometimes that’s all it is. And that’s my best five. The length bothered them. There were matchups out there for both Julius and for Naz almost all the time. I was kicking myself after Game 5 that I didn’t do it more.”

On the defensive plan, Finch zigged where the league assumed he’d zag.

“There was some narratives out there that we weren’t going to be able to stop them, that we’d have to try to outscore them to win,” Finch said. “I didn’t feel confident that was going to be us. I thought we had a defensive component that they didn’t have. I thought that was our big advantage of the series.”

That advantage showed up everywhere. The Wolves held Denver under 100 three times — a Nuggets offense that had only been held under 100 twice all regular season. The architects of all that? McDaniels and Gobert, whom Finch dubbed the co-MVPs of the series.

“He talked all series, and he backed it up all series,” Finch said of McDaniels. “And that’s called legitimate, tough.”

Murray went 4-of-17 in Game 6. Per Finch: “I don’t think he scored on Jaden the whole game.”

Gobert, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year, drew the Nikola Jokic assignment for six straight games and turned in some of the best individual defense Finch said he’s ever seen against a star of that caliber.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen somebody guard him that well for that many games in a row,” Finch said. “Without Rudy, we’re not in the position we were, because we rarely had to do anything different. Rudy took the matchup one on one.”

Stack it up: Finch had a better motivational angle, a better defensive scheme, a better counter when his roster was decimated and better in-game adjustments. Adelman, by contrast, still was sharing how he didn’t care what people write about him.

McDaniels lit a match. The Nuggets and their fans assumed it would burn the Wolves. As it turned out, the Wolves had way more fire — even without their normal firepower.