Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch said after the team’s Game 1 loss in the 2026 NBA Playoffs to the Denver Nuggets on Saturday night that Denver star Jamal Murray getting 16 free throw attempts was a “head-scratcher.”
“Yeah, I thought we played really good defense,” Finch told the media in his postgame press conference on Saturday. “I thought, on him, a lot of those ones in the second quarter, we were there, we were physical, we were vertical. He initiates the contact, he spills away, and he gets rewarded for it. Jokić does the same thing. We’ve gotta be solid around that. But 16 free throws is a lot.”
On Monday night, Finch addressed the topic again in his pregame media session.
And after spending a minute speaking about Murray’s free throws and NBA officiating, Finch finished the thought with, “Maybe we ought to start flopping too.”
Finch was then asked how to coach players to draw fouls, and he continued on about officiating, adding that Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards “doesn’t flop.”
Nuggets head coach David Adelman was also asked about Finch’s “head-scratcher” comments on Monday night, and Adelman fired back with details on Murray’s free throws.
“There was a flagrant foul; [Murray] shot three free throws,” Adelman said. “There was a technical foul; he shot a free throw. So, it was 12. And he got fouled.”
“It’s the playoffs. Everybody politics after games,” Adelman continued. “But let’s at least list out the 16 free throws and what actually happened. This is not one of those games where he’s just walking to the line. It was playing through a lot of physicality. Multiple guys getting into him. It’s what they do. They toe the line… From what I saw, flagrants and technicals are not part of the flow of the game, in my opinion, but we’ll move on.”
So, the drama is already very high in what will be an intriguing Western Conference series to follow.
About Matt Clapp
Matt is an editor/writer at The Comeback and Awful Announcing.
He can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.