Reusse: Timberwolves coach Chris Finch will be a magician if he finds enough minutes for everyone

Lou Nanne played his 635th regular-season game for the North Stars on Feb. 8, 1978. Within two weeks, he was the team’s general manager. He also assigned himself to be the coach for the final 29 games of the regular season, with the goal of making sure his team would lose very often and secure the rights to draft Bobby Smith with the No. 1 overall pick.

And this wasn’t the best part. The North Stars owners were tired of losing money, the Cleveland Barons were dying as a relocated franchise in that city, and a merger was arranged:

Cleveland’s Gund brothers would buy the North Stars and, basically, Nanne convinced the NHL to let him keep the players he wanted from two teams and the remainder would be part of a dispersal draft.

This brilliance led to a revival and a trip to the 1981 Stanley Cup finals, where they lost to the dynastic New York Islanders in five games.

Rarely has there been anything as much fun as listening to Louie for the few years at the start of the ‘80s when the North Stars were a winning, high-scoring outfit. Famously, there was a newspaper ad from the team preceding the 1981-82 season, reading “So Close We Can Taste It,” meaning the Stanley Cup.

And there was Louie, as the start of the season approached and the roster had to be cut, exclaiming: “We have too much talent.”

That seemed close to accurate when the North Stars scored 346 goals in 80 games and won the Norris Division comfortably, but as always, heartbreak followed — a 3-1 first-round elimination by a Blackhawks team that had finished 22 points behind in the standings.

That “too much talent” problem hasn’t surfaced often in the ensuing decades, particularly with our fall-to-spring professional sports teams.

We’ve been assured the North Stars’ NHL descendants, the Wild, won’t be facing that dilemma until the 2025-26 season. That’s when they can take those dastardly Ryan Suter and Zach Parise contracts off the books and add all those free agents waiting breathlessly to descend on St. Paul.

Sad to report, the “too much talent” crisis hit the west side of the Twin Cities this week when the Timberwolves trade sending Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks became official.

This is not the same KAT that played 100% of the games for 2½ seasons when Tom Thibodeau, now the Knicks coach, was coaching the Timberwolves from October 2016 to January 2019. This is a KAT turning 29 in November, who has played in 64% of the Wolves’ regular-season games over the past five seasons.

The Wolves received Donte DiVincenzo, Julius Randle and Keita Bates-Diop. The latter is a 6-8 forward and original Wolves draftee in 2018. He’ll have a job in the NBA this season, just probably not in Minnesota.

The reason: Too much talent.

And let’s face it, that’s a much greater problem in the NBA, where you’re handed a lineup sheet and there are five players for each team, than for the NHL, with four lines, three pairs on defense and a goalie.

My No. 1 concern with this trade was not the loss of Towns, but rather how Randle might handle it after becoming a well-regarded standout with those rabid fans in Madison Square Garden. Early on, a connected NBAer offered this in an exchange of messages:

“Chris Finch coached Randle in New Orleans and I’m told he was higher on him than was the front office there.”

On Thursday, as Jim Souhan wrote in a Star Tribune column, Randle was effusive in his praise for Finch and that relationship early in his career. Randle’s a year older than KAT and was a one-and-done a season earlier at Kentucky.

Randle can shoot. He’s not much of a defender. He’s not the equal to KAT as an overall player, but getting DiVincenzo more than offsets that. Donte’s a three-point bomber (much-needed here) and an excellent defender.

Here’s the problem this two standouts-for-one exchange adds to:

We found out last season that Finch is a nine-player rotation coach, at a maximum.

Well, “Finchy” might be a genius, as Randle declared Thursday, but he’s going to have to change his modus operandi when it comes to use of a bench.

Starters: Jaden McDaniels, Randle, Rudy Gobert, Mike Conley, Anthony Edwards.

Vets off bench: Naz Reid, DiVincenzo, Joe Ingles, Nickeil Alexander-Walker.

Youth that must be served: Luka Garza, Terrence Shannon Jr., Rob Dillingham.

Youth that should be served: Leonard Miller, Josh Minott.

You got a problem, Finchy. And it’s a tough one to fix in a five-player game: Too much talent.