Summer League is an opportunity for top picks to play their first organized basketball with their new teams, and for players to showcase their talents in hopes of making an NBA roster. It’s also a place where coaches can get valuable reps leading a team. The Minnesota Timberwolves have used Summer League as just that for their staff, especially under Tim Connelly. This season, Nathan Bubes has the opportunity to learn and grow in Las Vegas, and it’s a dream come true for the Wolves’ video coordinator.
Bubes will be following quite a few coaches who have taken the opportunity to advance their careers. In 2022, Kevin Burleson led the squad and is now a lead assistant in Detroit. The next summer, they gave it to Max Lefevre. Two seasons later, the Wolves promoted him from video coordinator to assistant coach and player development coach.
Chris Hines led the squad in 2024 while Anthony Edwards won a gold medal at the Olympics. Hines’ role also grew from development coach to an assistant coach before the 2025-26 season. He’s Edwards’ main development coach with the Wolves. Last summer, Kevin Hanson was largely in charge of Joan Beringer‘s development.
That leads us to Bubes, who may have one of the stranger paths to his first head coaching experience in Summer League.
Bubes has been on a basketball journey since high school. After not making the varsity team in his junior year of high school, Bubes managed his high school team for two seasons. Then, with no scholarships available for a basketball manager, he continued to carve his own path by becoming a manager at Boston College.
He managed the team for all four years of his undergrad and for both years as a graduate assistant en route to earning a master’s degree in business management. Bubes joked about his playing career ending early in high school after practice down in Las Vegas.
“I’ve been a basketball manager since the eleventh grade in highschool… starting in eleventh grade our highschool coach varsity coach said “hey you can’t play JV as an seventh grader but you can be a manager” so I did that, went to college (was) a four year manager, 2 year grad assistant and then somebody on the Boston College staff was into me and knew a Lakers assistant and it kind of went from there”
After one season in Los Angeles as a video intern in 2018-19, Bubes turned that experience into an assistant video coordinator role with the New Orleans Pelicans under Alvin Gentry and Stan Van Gundy. That’s where Bubes worked under Chris Finch from 2019 to 2020, prepping video for Finch when he was an associate head coach with the Pelicans. Finch left New Orleans after the 2020-21 season to be a lead assistant under Nick Nurse in Toronto.
However, after just half a season, the Timberwolves hired Finch away from the Toronto Raptors. Finch remembered Bubes from the Pelicans and offered him a position on Minnesota’s staff.
“There’s some differences for sure when you’re in the big chair, but I think that’s one of the best parts about [Finch] – he didn’t change at all,” Bubes said. “If you were friends with him before, you’re still friends with him. … For the most part, he has stayed true to himself, and that’s hard to do, and that’s hard to do with all the pressures. I hope I haven’t changed in six days.”
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Bubes began his tenure with Minnesota’s staff as a quality-control coach in 2021, following Finch’s hire. He served in that role for two seasons before the Wolves sent him, like many other coaches and players, down to Iowa to develop. There, they appointed Bubes as an assistant coach for the first time in his career. Kelly McCarty was a fellow assistant on that 2024-25 Iowa Wolves staff and spoke about the benefit of the Wolves sending coaches to Iowa before flying down to Las Vegas.
“Yeah, I think that speaks to the front office,” he said. “They are really strategic about hiring and how they develop coaches as well as players.
“Myself [and] Nate, we were in Iowa together, and being there, they lean into you, they give you a workload, and I like the fact that when you’re there, you’re not just there. They are checking in on you, you see their faces, they come to games, they’re on the road with us. I think that’s super important for coaching to develop because you have to learn and develop your voice.”
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Bubes echoed those sentiments after arriving in Las Vegas.
“I credit coach Finch, he came up through the G League so he’s a huge advocate of it and he came to me with the opportunity, like “hey you wanna coach? You got to go to the G League,” and that’s where you can get reps and make mistakes without the same consequences that are at the NBA level … We’ve had a ton of guys that have been a part of our G League coaching program that has come up and joined us. … There is G League influence everywhere you look.”
After the first game of Summer League, in which Bubes led the Wolves to a 105-92 victory over the Pelicans, he spoke about the full-circle moment of earning his first victory.
“Yeah, just super thankful to be in this spot,” he said, “going on six years with the Timberwolves, and Coach Finch kind of brought me here from New Orleans and you just kind of sit in there and like ‘Wow, this is where I was.’ 15 years ago I was coming here and just staying in a hotel room hoping to meet somebody, looking at badges… thankful to Coach Finch, Tim Connelly, Matt Lloyd and the whole crew here for everything.”
Bubes appears to be another success story in Minnesota’s ability to develop coaches, showcasing his talents as a rising coach during Summer League. Although the Wolves are 1-2 in Vegas, he’s showing the ability to coach and motivate a team full of players looking to crack NBA rosters. Given the upward trajectory of past Summer League coaches for the Wolves, it’s likely this won’t be the last time Bubes is at the helm of a team.
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