The Minnesota Timberwolves have had a lot of time off since eliminating the Golden State Warriors in five games, and now it's time for them to get the Western Conference Finals underway against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

In the meantime, the Timberwolves have been watching the Thunder grind out a brutal seven-game series against the Denver Nuggets. Denver doesn't have the bodies that Oklahoma City does, but David Adelman used a variety of unique tactics to bog the series down.

One thing that the Nuggets did consistently that was effective was play zone against the Thunder. Unfortunately for Minnesota, Chris Finch thinks the Wolves have regressed in that area this season according to Andrew Schlecht of The Athletic.

“Chris Finch said that they were better at zone last season, not as good this season. Said he didn’t know why,” Schlecht wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

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By playing a zone, the Nuggets were able to keep Shai Gilgeous-Alexander out of the paint and limit his scoring in spurts. Of course, the presumptive MVP still got to his spots and got buckets at times, but Denver was often able to funnel shots to Oklahoma City's weaker shooters and force some turnovers with the zone.

Part of the reason that the Nuggets used the zone so often is their lack of great individual defenders. Nikola Jokic, for all of the things he does well, is not a rim protector, and Denver doesn't have very good perimeter stoppers outside of Christina Braun.

Minnesota doesn't have that problem. Jaden McDaniels, Anthony Edwards and Nickeil Alexander-Walker can all get stops with the best of them when needed, and they have Rudy Gobert behind them protecting the cup. As a result, even if the Timberwolves have regressed a bit with the zone, they should be able to hold up in man-to-man defense.

Still, the Thunder are very difficult to stop no matter what defense you're playing. Gilgeous-Alexander isn't the league's scoring champion by mistake, and he can get a bucket against even the best defenders. On the other end, no team is better at turning defense into offense than the Thunder, so the Timberwolves can't have any letdowns on either end if they want to come out on top.