MILWAUKEE – Timberwolves President Gersson Rosas said he made the decision to fire Ryan Saunders on Sunday.
By Sunday night, Rosas had concluded what was seemingly one of the fastest coaching searches in recent NBA history when word leaked he was tabbing Raptors assistant Chris Finch as Saunders' permanent replacement.
But to hear Rosas tell it, while seated next to Finch at his introductory news conference on Monday, Finch's position as Rosas' top target to replace Saunders was sealed two years ago when Finch, who was most recently a Raptors assistant, interviewed for the job that eventually went to Saunders.
Why not conduct a more rigorous and thorough search? Rosas said that had to do with timing and the logistics of trying to conduct one during a pandemic.
"Because of the platform we're at, a lot of what this process and this search was about was going back to our original search when we hired Ryan," Rosas said. "Chris was a finalist there. … When we got that opportunity we were very aggressive with it because he's a candidate that we have experience with through our last process and the guy we identified as a target for us."
So while the process might have seemed furious, Finch's hiring was also something that was years in the making. If you go back further, it extends over a decade when Rosas and Finch worked together in the Rockets organization both the G-League and NBA levels when Rosas was the general manager of Rio Grande Valley and Finch was the head coach.
"Everything happens for a reason," Finch said. "This is a place I really want to be. This is place I wanted to be in 2019. Not every situation is for every candidate, and that's just part of the process. ... I worked with a lot of players, a lot of high-level players. In many ways I'm probably more prepared than had I been offered the job earlier in the process."
Rosas received criticism on multiple fronts for how that process played out and addressed those Monday. First came the seemingly merciless way in which he fired Saunders after Sunday's loss and then hired Finch officially only a few hours later.