Who is Micah Nori? Middletown native coaches Minnesota after Chris Finch's knee injury

When Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch was injured during the fourth quarter of his team's Game 4 win in the NBA playoffs against the Phoenix Suns, T'wolves assistant Micah Nori assumed coaching duties on the Minnesota bench to help the team close out the series and advance.

Finch is feared to have suffered a ruptured patellar tendon in his knee after colliding with Minnesota guard Mike Conley.

Nori, a longtime NBA assistant, is a Middletown native who played baseball at Fenwick and for the Middies. After playing baseball at Indiana University, he worked as a grad assistant at Miami University and earned his master's degree from MU.

"The whole team went down to the medical room, and (Finch) is obviously in good spirits, and so are the guys," Nori told reporters after the game. "With the way Finchy does things and the way that we've done things all season long, everybody has their roles. Everybody just kinda has each other's back. I know it sounds cliche. It seems corny. But it's just next man up, even with the coaching staff. … All those guys were great, you know, with the subs, offense, defense, and keeping alert with the timeouts. So it was kinda - I would never say business as usual, because Finchy does a phenomenal job, but just trying to carry over what he's been doing."

Nori, a Minnesota assistant since 2021, has also been an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors, Sacramento Kings, Denver Nuggets and Detroit Pistons since 2009.

What to know about Nori:

Nori was born April 8, 1974, the day Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's Major League Baseball home run record.

Four days earlier, Aaron tied Ruth's record in Cincinnati, with a homer off of the Reds' Jack Billingham.

Nori played multiple sports in high school, but went on to play baseball as a captain and middle infielder for the Hoosiers.

He told Minnpost.com's Britt Robson that injuries and a self-professed lack of athleticism kept him from pursuing professional baseball, but he starred at IU, finishing with a .305 batting average, 20 home runs, 127 RBI, 116 runs, 35 doubles and 18 stolen bases. He became the Hoosiers' hitting coach in 2005.

Fellow Middletown native and former Hoosier Butch Carter helped launch Nori's NBA coaching career.

Nori went to Oxford, Ohio, after IU, and was ready to take a job as a high school athletic director when Carter called.

Nori's father, Fred, was Carter's football coach in high school. Fred Nori, a baseball star for the Hoosiers in the 1960s who played in the New York Mets' organization, got his master's degree at Xavier University and later served as an assistant at IU, XU and MU. Fred Nori was a longtime baseball coach for the Middies and Fenwick as well.

Micah Nori lived with Carter and sat behind him on the bench for two years in Toronto. He spent about 10 years as an advance scout, and his first job as an NBA assistant was on the Raptors' coaching staff.

Like Nori, Chris Finch is from Ohio.

Finch grew up in Cambridge, the same hometown as John Glenn, longtime NFL coach Dom Capers and Stony Brook head coach and former Ohio University great Geno Ford.

Finch and Nori met in Denver, when Finch was associate head coach in 2016-17 and Nori was an assistant. They stayed in touch when Finch left to join the Pelicans in 2017, and Finch hired Nori as his lead assistant when he became the T'wolves' head coach in 2021.

Micah's younger brother, Brady Nori, starred for the RedHawks' baseball team.

Brady, who played for the Middies and graduated from Middletown in 1997, played first base at MU, and led all RedHawk batters at the 2001 MAC baseball tournament with a .480 batting average.

As a senior, Brady also broke the MAC single-season record for at-bats, surpassing the previous record of 235.

Brady was a Butler County Sports Hall of Fame class of 2023 inductee.

Micah's son, Dante Nori, is a top high school baseball prospect at Michigan's Northville High School, committed to Mississippi State.

Micah talked about Dante during a February appearance on MLB Network's "Hot Stove."

Dante is ranked 49th among MLB.com's top draft prospects.

Dante, a senior outfielder, walked twice and struck out once in a 6-2 loss to Moeller two weeks ago in the 2024 PBR Ohio High School Invitational.

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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Middletown's Micah Nori coaches Minnesota after Chris Finch's injury