Chris Finch excited about pending Wolves sale to Alex Rodriguez

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said recently he was a big baseball fan and spent time chatting with Karl-Anthony Towns about the start of the season on a recent team flight.

Now Finch will have someone else to talk baseball with soon after the stunning news Saturday that former MLB superstar Alex Rodriguez and billionaire Marc Lore entered an exclusive letter of intent to take over the Wolves ownership from Glen Taylor.

Finch said Sunday he hadn't yet spoken to Rodriguez or Lore but was excited at what Rodriguez could bring to the organization.

"I'm sure he understands sports at a very high level," Finch said. "Certainly will bring some sex appeal to the organization, the city, to the team and we've got, again, I think the more skill sets and personality types you can bring to any kind of leadership group the more it's going to be reflected in the overall mission."

Finch did say he had a chance to speak Sunday morning with Taylor and had a "great conversation" with him. Taylor isn't leaving the Wolves any time soon, as the agreement between Taylor, Rodriguez and Lore lays out a path for Taylor to still remain the controlling owner through 2023, when Rodriguez and Lore would take over.

"[Taylor's] excited," Finch said. "We're excited to welcome in new owners to what's looking like a really dynamic ownership group over the next couple of years. That doesn't change our mission. Our mission is to still try to build a winning team here and that's a day by day procedure."

Finch said in his experience it was important for all levels of the organization to be on the same page as ownership. That ultimately can affect what happens on the court in terms of wins and losses.

"It's about having the vision and the resources and the patience and the leadership and all the things that it takes for any organization to be successful," Finch said. "That trickles down all the way through to the team on the floor."

Finch also said he liked to have an "open-door policy" with ownership at every level he coached.

"You want them to feel intimately involved with the process, the team and everything else that goes around it," Finch said. "You want them to be an active partner. … I'm not the type that's going to try to exclude them from their own team. And again, that's super high level. My job is to coach the team and make the players as best as possible. That's my day job, and that's what I focus 99% of my time on."

The Wolves honored Karl-Anthony Towns' mother, Jacqueline, at Sunday's game, to mark the one-year anniversary of her death from COVID-19, which falls Tuesday.

The Wolves had a photo reel of her before the game and has an honorary set with her jersey lit up before the national anthem. Towns father, Karl Sr., was also expected to be in attendance.