After missing each of the Timberwolves’ last two games, starting point guard Mike Conley remains questionable for the team’s home bout Tuesday against the Houston Rockets — the third of four NBA Cup group-play contests — with a toe sprain.

At practice Monday, Minnesota coach Chris Finch said Conley is “day to day” with the injury. Finch said Conley was set to meet with medical people on Monday to discuss the injury.

Conley has already missed three games for the Wolves this season. Minnesota is 0-3 on those occasions. The offense has largely sputtered in each defeat.

Should Conley miss more contests, Minnesota needs to find more consistent offense sans its floor general.

Finch noted everyone must carry a “make the right play mentality.”

“It just unlocks shots for others,” Finch said. “Sometimes, the ball – of course we want it in (Anthony Edwards’) hands, we want it in (Julius Randle’s) hands early – but they’ve got to still trust the actions of the offense to get everybody else involved, and it’ll come back enough times. It just gives us a different look, as well.”

Donte DiVincenzo started the Boston game for Minnesota in Conley’s stead, while Nickeil Alexander-Walker has started the other two games Conley has missed. Neither is a true point guard by any stretch, and both seem to have to sacrifice themselves to a degree when they take on the bulk of the point guard responsibilities. Outside of Conley, rookie Rob Dillingham is the only other point guard on the roster.

He has received more run of late, and played the best game of his young NBA career on Sunday in Boston. Dillingham scored 14 points on 6 for 10 shooting in 16 minutes.

“Offensively, I thought it was really the first time he saw the whole game,” Finch said. “We look different when he’s on the floor. He gives us a change of speed. He was instrumental in helping us get back into the game. This is all part of the growth.”

That growth, the coach noted, has been continuous for the 19- year-old, who has also shown an impressive level of competitiveness on the defensive end in spite of his small stature. Still, Dillingham doesn’t figure to be a 30-minute solution when Conley is out. It’s not the role Minnesota envisions for him on this team this early in the rookie’s NBA career. The slack for Conley’s absence will need to be picked up by the collective.

If that occurs, Rudy Gobert said the team can be better for it in the long run.

“Obviously, we miss Mike and obviously everything he does on the floor for his teammates is valuable for us,” Gobert said. “But I think when he’s not there it’s a big opportunity for us to get better in those situations and even to require us to be more aware and connected, because he’s somebody that connects everyone and is unselfish. So I think playing without Mike now can probably help us for later. Keep getting better and pushing everyone to keep getting better.”

That connectiveness — the willingness to make a play for someone else — is something Gobert conceded has been lacking when Conley misses games.

“We realize that when we don’t do that, we can’t be as good,” Gobert said. “Ant has been amazing the past few games making the right play or putting us into our actions. I think that’s the key for us just trusting the action, trusting the team, trusting all our strengths. We’re a very talented team so when we do that, good things happen.”

Throughout much of the 1980s, there was a regularly-scheduled game between the original Winnipeg Jets franchise (which moved to Arizona in 1996 and now resides in Utah) and the Minnesota North Stars (who relocated to Dallas in 1993) played on December 26 – which is known as Boxing Day in Canada.

One year the Jets would travel to Bloomington the morning after Christmas to face the North Stars at Met Center. The next year, the North Stars would hop on a northbound plane early on the morning after Christmas for a trip to the old Winnipeg Arena, which featured seats shoved into every available inch of space, and a massive portrait of Queen Elizabeth II smiling down upon the skaters on one end of the rink.

The hockey was frankly never that great, with the teams skating off their holiday ham, and while the Jets and North Stars both had some great players in the 21-team era of the NHL, they collectively won a combined total of three games in the Stanley Cup Final before the franchises moved to the Sun Belt.

Flash forward to 2024, where we’re 25 years into the life of the expansion Wild and more than a decade into the new Jets, after the woeful Atlanta Thrashers moved to Manitoba in 2011. When these teams met on October 13 in downtown Winnipeg, not many expected what would shake out as (for now) two of the top teams in the Western Conference were on the ice that day for a 2-1 overtime win by the Jets.

But with the two teams off to red-hot starts, Monday’s rematch in Minnesota was clearly viewed as a measuring stick by people on both benches.

“We’ve talked about this, the Central Division doesn’t get any easier. Everybody is a tough out and these guys, obviously, have been having a great start – just like us,” Jets coach Scott Arniel said following the team’s morning skate in St. Paul. “We know what they’re about, and we saw them early in the year. They’re banged up a little. But at the same time, they’ve found ways to win hockey games. They’re well structured, they’ve got great goaltending and good specialty teams.”

With these two teams atop the division standings, Wild players were as focused on trying to show that the Jets were human and perhaps losing a little altitude following Winnipeg’s eye-popping 15-1 start to the season.

‘We’re looking at it as a Central Division matchup, a rivalry and a team that we’re chasing,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno said. “Measuring stick? I like to think that those games are the ones you play against the Stanley Cup champions from the previous year. But Winnipeg’s playing really well this year, and whenever you get a chance to beat a top dog in your division, it’s always something that you’ve got to be prepared for.”

Kaprizov plays, but Boyd stays

Two days after his eventful Minnesota Wild debut, Travis Boyd was in street clothes after he warmed up for the game versus Winnipeg, but he was notably still in St. Paul, and not headed back to Iowa. The Hopkins native was on the fourth line for the Wild’s 4-3 shootout loss in Calgary on Saturday afternoon, after an adventure just getting to the rink.

With the injuries to Kirill Kaprizov and Marat Khusnutdinov suffered in a 5-3 win in Edmonton last Thursday, Boyd had been recalled from Iowa under emergency conditions. Boyd was one of the last players to leave the ice at the team’s morning skate at TRIA Rink on Monday, indicating that he would not be in the lineup versus the Jets. But a few hours prior to the game, the Wild terminated the emergency conditions, indicating that Kaprizov would return to the lineup, but Boyd would remain with the team, at least for the time being.

If the former Gopher is to play a home game for the Wild, it would likely be on Black Friday versus Chicago, or Saturday night versus Nashville.

By JILL COLVIN

NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office as part of his efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.

The tariffs, if implemented, could dramatically raise prices on everything from gas to automobiles. The U.S. is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent Census data.

Trump made the threats in a pair of posts on his Truth Social site Monday evening in which he railed against an influx of illegal migrants, even though southern border crossings have been hovering at a four-year low.

“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” he wrote, complaining that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” even though violent crime is down from pandemic highs.

He said the new tariffs would remain in place “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! ”

Trump also turned his ire to China, saying he has “had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail.”

FILE – President-elect Donald Trump speaks at meeting of the House GOP conference, Nov. 13, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

“Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America,” he wrote.

It is unclear whether Trump will actually go through with the threats or if he is using them as a negotiating tactic before he takes office in the new year.

Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling and remained around four-year lows in October, according to the most recent U.S. numbers

The Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests in October, less than one third of the tally from last October.

Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico. Border seizures of the drug rose sharply under President Joe Biden, and U.S. officials tallied about 21,900 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl seized in the 2024 government budget year, compared with 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.

Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, if confirmed, would be one of several officials responsible for imposing tariffs on other nations. He has on several occasions said tariffs are a means of negotiation with other countries.

He wrote in a Fox News op-ed last week, before his nomination, that tariffs are “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign policy objectives. Whether it is getting allies to spend more on their own defense, opening foreign markets to U.S. exports, securing cooperation on ending illegal immigration and interdicting fentanyl trafficking, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role.”

If Trump were to move forward with the threatened tariffs, the new taxes would pose an enormous challenge for the economies of Canada and Mexico, in particular.

They would also throw into doubt the reliability of the 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump, which is up for review in 2026.

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Spokespeople for Canada’s ambassador to Washington and its deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, who chairs a special Cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations to address concerns about another Trump presidency, did not immediately provide comment.

Trump’s promise to launch a mass deportation effort is a top focus for the Cabinet committee, Freeland has said.

A senior Canadian official had said before Trump’s posts that Canadian officials are expecting Trump to issue executive orders on trade and the border as soon as he assumes office. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department and Economy Department also had no immediate reaction to Trump’s statements. Normally such weighty issues are handled by the president at her morning press briefings.

Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Robert Gillies in Toronto, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City, Fatima Hussein and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.