Two days after calling Jamal Murray’s 16 free throw attempts in Game 1 a “head-scratcher,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch doubled down Monday and accused the Nuggets of flopping before Game 2 of the first-round playoff series between the division rivals.
Denver attempted 33 free throws in a 116-105 series-opening win, led by Murray’s 16-for-16 game. Minnesota attempted 19 free throws as a team.
Finch, a former Nuggets assistant coach, was miffed during his postgame press conference. When asked again for his perspective on the disparity with the benefit of hindsight, he took aim at not only the referees but the Nuggets for the taboo act of intentionally trying to draw fouls.
“One guy shot 16 free throws. What do you want me to say? They weren’t all fouls. Some of them were fouls,” Finch said Monday night. “The league is in a place right now where you draw the contact (and) when you spill away, 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. Fouls are rewarded up the floor. They’re not rewarded in and around the paint. … It’s really hard to defend sometimes, and especially now, guys have figured out if they just lower the shoulder on you and move you out of the way, you get all the advantage. So, not sure how to answer that to our guys sometimes when they get frustrated. But we’ve gotta do a better job.”
Finch was almost done with his answer. Almost. But he had one more comment to add.
“And maybe we’ve gotta start flopping, too,” he finished.
Nuggets coach David Adelman defended Murray during his pregame comments.
“I mean, there was a flagrant foul; he shot three free throws. There was a technical foul; he shot a free throw. So it was 12,” Adelman said. “And he got fouled. So it’s the playoffs. Everybody politicks after games, but let’s at least list out the 16 free throws and what actually happened. This isn’t 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. And the fouls early allowed them to argue the point that the fouls were 4-0 to start, and then you start seeing a reaction (from the officials).
“So that stuff happens in these games; they’re so physical. It could happen the other way tonight. It’s just the way it is. But from what I saw, flagrants and technicals are not part of the flow of the game, in my opinion. But we’ll move on.”
The flagrant referenced by Adelman was a close-out by Jaden McDaniels into the landing space of Murray on a 3-point attempt, which is technically part of the flow of the game. But it was verified as a foul by the officials via replay review — they initially called it a common foul then upgraded it to a flagrant.
In addition to those three, Murray shot one free throw after a technical foul that was called on McDaniels for shoving Nikola Jokic in the back. Then in the fourth quarter, Julius Randle committed an away-from-the-play foul for trying to grapple with Aaron Gordon before an inbound pass, resulting in another Murray free throw unrelated to his activity.
“I do think sometimes when you watch film, you just say, ‘Yeah, that guy got fouled,'” Adelman said. “There’s nights, believe me, when we play Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander) or somebody who shoots a lot of free throws, I don’t go back to the clips and say, ‘I can’t believe you got all those calls.’ I go, ‘Why are we fouling him so much?’”
Aside from Murray, the leaders in individual free throw attempts for Game 1 were Denver’s Aaron Gordon (eight), Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards (seven), Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert (five) and Minnesota’s McDaniels (four). Jokic went to the foul line only once; Randle went only twice for the Wolves.
“Julius is not a flopper. Ant’s not a flopper. Those guys are physical drivers,” Finch said. “They play through the first line of contact a lot. And a lot of times, that point of contact, if you were to spill away, he gets a foul. But if he keeps going, then they take a ‘play on’ mentality. The level of contact and the legality of the guarding position is exactly the same.”
