Before the three-point revolution came to the NBA, before Karl-Anthony Towns staked his claim as the greatest shooting big man of all time, Chris Finch was working on the future of the sport across the Atlantic.

From 1997 to 2003, the Timberwolves coach led the Sheffield Sharks of the British Basketball League, earning two Coach of the Year awards with a rag-tag group of undersized bigs and speedy sharpshooters. Finch didn’t necessarily know he was taking part in the game’s transformation as he worked to build a winner in Europe.

“The reason we played that way is because it’s all we could afford,” Finch says. “We played in a hyperefficient system, but at the time I had never seen the math. It’s just what made sense for us.”

Finch, now 52, wasn’t eyeing a spot on an NBA bench as he logged coaching stints in England and Belgium. He landed his first coaching gig with Sheffield after playing for the club for four seasons, ending a playing career Finch says “was going nowhere fast.” The transition to coaching was rocky in spurts—Finch noted he could be “moody” and “overly emotional”—though success came quickly as the Sharks won the BBL Cup in 1999 and 2000. Finch viewed the international game as a potential route to collegiate coaching, where he could conceivably climb the ranks from Division III or NAIA schools to Division I programs. But one former NBA executive changed that plan in a hurry.