New Orleans Pelicans assistant Chris Finch seems like head coach candidate

With the New Orleans Pelicans offense looking so good for stretches of this season, an outside team could come calling about their offensive assistant.

Seemingly finished with their portion of the 2019-2020 NBA season in any large capacity, the New Orleans Pelicans probably won’t be making a ton of drastic changes. However, one of their own could be a target for another organization.

Even though the team struggled out of the gate this season, Associate Head Coach, Offense, Chris Finch seems like an interesting option for other teams to target as their head coach.

While it likely wouldn’t be with a team stocked with veterans, an organization looking for someone to help develop young talent could see a lot of value in what Finch has been able to do in his handful of stops around the NBA.

Interestingly, the Minnesota Timberwolves did interview Finch for their opening that eventually went to Ryan Saunders a year ago, which would’ve allowed the Pelicans assistant to coach interesting young players like Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, and Jarrett Culver.

Coaching overseas beginning in 1997 with the Sheffield Sharks (where he spent four years as a player), Finch eventually led the Rio Grande Valley Vipers to a D-League Championship in 2010, which earned him the Dennis Johnson Coach of the Year Award.

Finch then found his way to the NBA in 2011, spending five years as an assistant with the Houston Rockets, before spending 2017 and 2018 in a bigger role with the Denver Nuggets.

"“One thing I learned in coaching is that every player is different, even though they may have similar games. If you lose a player from a roster who is a big-time scorer and you just try to replace him, for example, a lot of times it doesn’t work. You have to shift focus to the other strengths of the roster, while at the same time replacing talent. That was a lesson we learned in the D-League all the time,” Finch said to the team’s website after joining the Pelicans from Denver in 2017."

Joining the New Orleans Pelicans organization in 2017, Finch is essentially second-in-command to Alvin Gentry on all things related to the offensive side of the game (Jeff Bzdelik is in the same role on the defensive end).

This season, the Pelicans have seen the breakout of Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, and Zion Williamson, all of whom looked like fully capable NBA scorers during their first season with the organization.

Coaching much of the team’s scoring charge, Finch has this New Orleans offense tuned up; the Pelicans rank sixth in effective field goal percentage (54.5%, according to Cleaning the Glass), fourth in points per game (116.2), third in three-point shots made per game (14), third in assists (27), and seventh in points-per-transition-play (126.8).

While some of this is certainly a credit to the up-tempo offensive mind of Alvin Gentry, this team is finding a lot of life through their ball movement, even if they’ve struggled with turnovers throughout this season (like a lot of young teams do in the NBA).

Rolling with the punches through the team’s up and down last few seasons, Finch continues to find ways to get the Pelicans offense firing at a high level; it’s a huge part of why this team had a chance to race towards the eighth seed before the suspension of the season.

Teams with young cores like the Chicago Bulls, the New York Knicks, Washington Wizards, and the Atlanta Hawks have already or have the potential to make a change at head coach in the next few months. It seems like Finch will at least get the chance to interview for a few of those jobs.

Though the New Orleans Pelicans are trending up and would probably like to roll a lot of their coaching staff back for next season, Chris Finch has the potential to be a really good head man in this league, so if he gets the opportunity, there’s unlikely to be any bad blood about the departure.