Timberwolves coach Chris Finch ruptures patellar tendon in fourth-quarter collision with Mike Conley

PHOENIX – The Timberwolves didn’t escape their series against the Suns without a significant injury, but it wasn’t to any of their players.

Coach Chris Finch suffered a right patellar tendon rupture following a collision with point guard Mike Conley in the fourth quarter of the team’s 122-116 victory over the Suns.

Devin Booker fouled Conley as he was heading up the floor, and Booker pushed Conley toward the sideline, where he couldn’t help but run into Finch, who was there standing on the sideline.

Play was stopped with 1 minute, 41 seconds left and the Wolves up 117-113 as the team’s athletic training staff tended to Finch, who left the sideline after getting helped up.

Assistant coach Micah Nori took over on the sideline the rest of the game, just as Nori did when the Wolves lost in Cleveland earlier this season when Finch was too sick to coach.

“I think that I did much better than I did in Cleveland when I took over,” Nori said as he filled in for Finch at his postgame news conference. “So maybe I’m a two-minute coach in that way. But at the end of the day, everything, the way Finchy does things and the way we’ve done things all season long, everybody has their roles and everybody just has each other’s backs.”

The team visited Finch in a medical room after the game, and Conley joked Finch wasn’t too happy to see him.

“I walked in and he started to run away. He just tried to shoo me away,” Conley said of Finch, who earlier Sunday came in third in NBA Coach of the Year voting; the award was won by Oklahoma City’s Mark Daigneault. “I didn’t see him, honestly at first, I was just trying to push the ball up the floor and Book hip-checked me out of bounds and when I saw him it was too late. … It was just bad timing.”

Finch was carted out of the arena with a leg brace and appeared in a good mood despite the injury. He said a quick hello to reporters who were nearby and to Anthony Edwards who was still in the back of the arena with family and friends. It’s unclear how Finch might handle coaching duties in Round 2 with the injury.