Editor’s note: This is the second installment of Conley’s Corner, Volume 2.
Over the past two months, Mike Conley has looked a lot like, well, Mike Conley. Without context, that wouldn’t be a newsworthy statement. But the floor general’s current form is a sharp contrast from the player he was to open this season.
Conley couldn’t hit a shot over the first three months of the campaign, and wasn’t moving well on either end of the floor. At age 37, the poor first half led many to wonder if Father Time had come for Conley. No shame in that, it happens to us all.
But Conley has rewritten the narrative over the past 10 weeks. Since Jan. 17, the point guard is hitting 51% of his 3-point attempts — the best mark in the NBA — and is tallying 5.18 assists per every turnover, seventh best in the Association.
Minnesota is outscoring opponents by 10.4 points per 100 possessions with Conley on the floor in that span. His current impact is what the team was accustomed to getting from him in each of the previous two campaigns. What sparked the guard’s revival?
Health.
A wrist injury prevented Conley from picking up a basketball for the two months prior to training camp. He can cite the day almost exactly — it was either September 18th or 19th — before the lefty could do anything with his dominant hand.
It’s always a bit of a ramp up to training camp for Conley, who has gotten knee injections ahead of the past five or so seasons to fend off the issues caused by the wear and tear of a lengthy basketball career. Those injections require a recovery process, and all of it was severely hampered by the wrist ailment.
“Day 1 of training camp, I was like, ‘I hope I’m ready,’ ” Conley said.
While knowing full well he wasn’t.
“I wasn’t able to work out how I normally do. I wasn’t able to do stuff on the court, conditioned. By the time I get to training camp, I’m (usually) in this shape (I’m in now),” Conley said. “I was trying to get that as we were in October, November, December — trying to build back up to who I can be. But you’re out there with young guys and you’re basically playing catch up.”
Conley noted he didn’t want to cut too hard on his knees, or flick his wrist too hard in fear of a reaggravation. He was nervous about falling incorrectly or even handling the ball in a certain way. He was growing more fatigued because his body was compensating for the parts that weren’t 100%.
He didn’t do anything with confidence.
“It affects the way you approach the game out there,” Conley said. “You’re not the same person.”
But he wasn’t going to sit out. Conley noted that he came into the league at a time when you didn’t want to miss games. If you could possibly play through an ailment, you did. He has loosened his grip on the ideology a bit recently. When the organization tells him it’s a game for him to sit, he doesn’t offer as much resistance.
Yet the moment he could somewhat grip a ball after dislocating his finger, he was back in action. Conley didn’t play well with his hand wrapped fresh out of the all-star break, but he preferred it to missing two to three weeks knowing the ramp-up period required for players his age after a lengthy absence.
Conley noted the wrist and his knees rounded into form just before the finger injury. So, once the digits were good, he was full go. Health generated confidence. He hasn’t looked back since.
Conley is not, in fact, washed up. He was aware that some people thought he was.
“In our line of work, man, people don’t care. And they shouldn’t. … They care about what you do on that court,” Conley said. “I learned about that a long time ago, and that’s part of the job. So, I go out there, and if I’m not playing well, I’m not playing well. That’s why I don’t say nothing about anything else like, ‘Man, I didn’t sleep well last night,’ or, ‘I had the flu.’ No, I didn’t play well. I get it.”
Conley only even mentioned the summer wrist injury when specifically asked about the tape job on the wrist one day after practice. The knee injections were never brought up during the struggles. Conley believes he still should’ve played better through it all.
And he never doubted that, even at his age, he would return to form.
“I just wanted to get healthy. I’m ready to get back to being myself,” Conley said.
There were times during his poor start that Conley went to Chris Finch and made it clear that the coach had license to bring the veteran off the bench, reduce his minutes, whatever Finch believed was necessary to help the team win.
“Trust me, I’m a realist,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Man, if I’m not helping, I shouldn’t be out there.’”
Finch wouldn’t bite. The furthest he went was moving Donte DiVincenzo into the starting lineup, a spot Conley has since reclaimed. But Conley’s minutes never dipped much below 20 a game.
Finch maintained a firm belief of how Conley could help the Wolves. The guard’s teammates felt the same.
“All that faith just gives you that much more motivation of, ‘You’re still that guy. Just go out and do it,’ ” Conley said.
That faith has been handsomely rewarded over the past two months, and any outside beliefs that Conley’s days of productive play were behind him have been proven incorrect.
“I just really enjoy being able to help the team how I know I can,” he said. “There’s games I feel like I dominate, and I look up and I had six points and five assists and I’m like, ‘Man, I dominated tonight.’ … I felt really great about the activity I put out on the court,” Conley said. “So, hopefully it’s just the beginning of more of that.”
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