Chris Finch isn’t promising Isaiah Evans anything, but he isn’t closing the door, either.
The Minnesota Timberwolves used the 33rd overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft on Evans, a 20-year-old who many mock drafts had pegged as a first-rounder. That slide put him in second-round territory, and it also made his path to minutes with Minnesota a lot steeper.
Finch talked about the rookie on Wednesday during an appearance on Paul Allen’s radio show on KFAN, and the message was pretty clear: the Wolves are going to be patient.
“I got a report card out of Paris,” Finch said. “A couple of guys said, ‘Hey, the rook’s really good coach, he just needs coaching.’ And I’m like, ‘Good, that’s exactly what we want to hear.’”
He followed that up with a straight answer about how Minnesota plans to handle him.
“We’re definitely going to take a bit longer of a runway with him, we’re not going to rush anything. He’s going to have every opportunity to earn his chances through training camp. We know that.”
That sounds about right for a second-round pick on a team with championship aspirations. Evans can absolutely force the issue, but he’s going to have to make it impossible to ignore him before he gets real run.
The most obvious path is his shooting. Evans’ calling card is long-range marksmanship, and that’s the trait that could get him onto the floor sooner than expected. His three-point percentage dipped in his sophomore season at Duke, but he hit 41.6 percent as a freshman.
There’s at least some precedent for a second-rounder making that kind of leap. The Oklahoma City Thunder probably didn’t expect Ajay Mitchell to carve out much of a rookie role after taking him in the second round of the 2024 NBA Draft, but he quickly proved he belonged.
Still, Finch’s recent history with rookies doesn’t exactly scream immediate opportunity. Under his watch, young players have generally had to fight for every minute, and Evans may end up spending a lot of his rookie season on the bench or with the Iowa Wolves in the G League.
That doesn’t mean he’s a lost cause. It just means the expectation right now is that he won’t be a major factor in 2026-27. If he pops in camp and preseason, though, Finch’s “longer runway” could get shorter in a hurry.
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