RandBall: Chris Finch finally listened. Maybe the Vikings and Twins will follow suit?

On Saturday night, after a strange loss in Detroit dropped the Timberwolves to 17-17, coach Chris Finch was asked whether he had given any consideration to shaking up a struggling starting lineup.

“You guys ask me this question all the time,” Finch said. “If I felt that the magic bullet was changing the starting lineup, I would have done that already. I don’t think I’m being particularly stubborn. There’s a chain reaction to everything you do. There are other combinations and things that go on on the floor that are just as important, if not more so, than the starting lineup.”

Something obviously happened between Saturday night and Monday night, when Finch did in fact decide to make a lineup switch by replacing Mike Conley Jr. with Donte DiVincenzo. It worked for both players and the Wolves, who beat the Los Angeles Clippers 108-106. So why the change of heart?

“You know, I just read all the papers,” he said. “Everybody was telling me. I was like: ‘You know what? I should change the starting lineup.’”

He was teasing, to be sure, but every joke has an element of truth — something I talked about on Tuesday’s Daily Delivery podcast. If enough passionate and knowledgeable fans, plus several invested media members, are constantly clamoring for a change, it demands another look from those with true power.

A lot of us could see the starting lineup was broken, and I was only one of many to voice that concern. Now that Finch has “listened,” maybe there’s hope that a couple other Minnesota teams will follow suit? Let’s amplify some urgent pleas from fans just in case power brokers, like Finch, are reading:

Vikings: The offensive line is not a disaster, which it often has been in past years. When healthy, Minnesota has two of the best tackles in the NFL. But the interior of the line, which has not been given the same level of recent investment, is still a major problem. That needs to be rectified in the offseason. More urgently, as we saw when the Detroit Lions blitzed the heck out of the Vikings — often with seven defenders, a lot of them going straight up the middle — coach Kevin O’Connell needs a better game plan to help quarterback Sam Darnold with quick reads that can turn into explosive catch-and-run plays. Otherwise, the Rams are going to copy the Lions’ game plan and a great Vikings season is going to end in Los Angeles on Monday night.

Twins: Almost every year around this time, I’m bored by the Twins’ offseason transactions but also reminded that many of their bigger moves tend to happen later in January or even February (and sometimes March). The sense this year, though, is that spending will be extremely tight as the Twins explore a sale and try to keep payroll down. I’m sensing frustration turning to apathy with a decent number of Twins fans, and I’m offering this free advice (a price the Twins surely will like): Even a little spending this offseason would help restore some of the good will that has been lost in the last year. The cost of doing nothing will be considerable.