EDITOR’S NOTE: Mike Conley is one of the best sources of information in the NBA. 

Entering his 17th NBA season, the 36-year-old Timberwolves point guard has seen it all, and has the knowledge and willingness to explain what’s taken place and what’s to come with the media and, thus, the fans. That breadth of insight and analysis extends from the on-court Xs and Os to team dynamics and development. 

Conley is just as good at explaining why two teammates came to blows in the middle of a timeout as he is on what the team needs to do to decode a switch-heavy defense.

So who better to sit down with twice a month to tackle different topics ranging from the Timberwolves to the league at large to, well, Mike Conley, than Conley himself.

This is the second installment of Conley’s Corner.

CHASING A CHAMPIONSHIP

It determines his diet. It’s the reason he uses spare moments around his house to stretch. It’s why he’s constantly thinking of ways to improve his game and better prepare himself for the next day.

Winning an NBA championship is not at the forefront of Mike Conley’s mind on a daily basis.

But the point guard admitted it has “unconsciously” impacted his lifestyle.

“That’s stuff you do thinking about a championship,” Conley said. “Ultimately, it runs my life.”

Entering his 17th NBA season, the lack of a title is the one hole remaining on Conley’s illustrious basketball career resume. He prescribes to the theory that his career wouldn’t quite be complete without a championship, only because that’s how he’s always viewed the game.

“That’s exactly how I felt since I came into the league. My whole mindset was championship. I want to be one of those guys that has a ring one day, has multiple. That kind of career is what you think of as a kid,” Conley said. “I haven’t wavered from that. That’s been my only goal, in a sense. And everything in between is cool — individual accolades are cool, contracts are cool, but the kid part is still in me, like, ‘Man, I just want to win the big game.’ ”

That ultimate goal means more now than ever before. Conley’s children have reached the age where they are very into dad’s profession, and his team’s success. Conley said if you watched his kids during the team’s preseason game against Maccabi Ra’anana, “you could’ve thought it was Game 7 of the NBA Finals.”

“They were super into it,” he said. “They love just being around it — being around the game, the people and fans and stuff — but they’re starting to love basketball and watching dad play.”

How cool it would be for them to see him lift a trophy at season’s end. There have only been a handful of times in Conley’s career where he’s entered the season thinking that was a legitimate possibility.

This is one of them.

“I honestly feel like this team, and the way the NBA is set up — the parity that’s come out — it’s more open and there’s more opportunity for more teams than usual, so why not (put) us in that category?” Conley said. “I feel like we’ve got a good chance to make those jumps to hopefully get to that point.”

The Timberwolves, while receiving credit as a potential top-four seed in the Western Conference, haven’t really been mentioned as a title contender by prognosticators entering the season, which opens for Minnesota on Wednesday in Toronto.

But Conley noted the Timberwolves have a roster — No. 1 through No. 15 — with the talent, length, athleticism and depth to go out and compete on a nightly basis.

“You’ve got young superstars in Ant and KAT and Rudy. You’ve just got a good mix of people’s games together. And you’ve got a little bit of that continuity, too, having a lot of guys returning,” Conley said. “And Coach (Chris) Finch, you’ve got to have a guy that can lead the ship and manage these guys and the egos and all things that come with the NBA lifestyle and game.”

He hopes the Timberwolves can stay healthy and mesh together at the right time. Those are two key factors in winning a title. Health has stood in the way of a couple of Conley’s best chances to claim a ring.

In 2015, Memphis took on Golden State in the Western Conference semifinals. The Warriors won Game 1, which Conley missed with a facial fracture. But the point guard returned for Game 2, which Memphis stole in Oakland. The Grizzlies claimed a 2-1 series advantage after Game 3. But Memphis lost star defender Tony Allen to a hamstring injury in Game 4, and didn’t win another game in the series.

“It was hard to guard Klay and Steph (without him),” Conley noted.

Then in 2021, Utah sported the best regular-season record in the Western Conference. But Conley, an all-star that season, aggravated a hamstring injury in Game 5 of the Jazz’s first-round series victory. He missed the first five games of the conference semifinals against the Clippers, only to return in Game 6, which Los Angeles won to claim the series.

“I played the sixth game at like 40 percent. I was like, ‘I’ve got to try it.’ But at that point, it was like, ‘Man, if I was healthy from that first game on, man, we were rolling.’ So we had a real chance. A lot of us talk about it,” Conley said. “It was wide open. We were like, ‘We can do this thing.’ And then that injury just hit at the worst time.”

Which happens to many teams each season. All you can continue to do is give yourself as many bites at the apple as possible in hopes of eventually breaking through.

Denver was probably the healthiest team in last year’s playoffs. When you combine that with the Nuggets’ talent level and overall quality of play, it’s a championship recipe. The Timberwolves, meanwhile, were decimated by injuries prior to and during their first-round series with the Nuggets. But Minnesota — Conley included — took a number of positives away from the challenges it presented to Denver.

That seems to be the root of much of the optimism surrounding the team this fall. Conley is encouraged by the actions everyone is putting behind that belief.

“I think that everybody has kind of taken it upon themselves for a little bit more accountability on their side to be better at the smaller things,” he said. “This team last year, from my perspective, we had times where it looked like we couldn’t be beat. And then there were moments and quarters where it was like, ‘What are we doing? We don’t know how to pass, we don’t know how to shoot.’ So I think having less of those moments comes with the attention to detail. … You’re just seeing it … guys are just paying more attention to it.”

But there will be trials and tribulations. There always are throughout the course of a season. Conley noted it’s how you handle those that determine your fate.

“It’s the ability to go on a two- or three-game losing streak, snap out of it and have team meetings, talk to each other. The media is tackling you and trying to split you apart, and you band together and have moments in the season that become those signature moments that you can look back at and say, ‘Hey, this is when they became who they were,’ ” Conley said. “And then, boom, it pops. I think a lot of teams go through that stage and they figure it out. We’re a team that I think we check some of those boxes — we’ve got the talent, we’ve got the bodies, we’ve got the depth — but can we withstand adversity? Can we get through it when things go rough?”

It’s all to-be-determined, but the 36-year-old floor general is excited to find out. A year ago at this time, he was the point guard for a rebuilding Utah team that traded away its two premier players in the offseason. Title contention was not on the menu for that team. And it was fair to wonder if Conley would ever again be in such a position again.

“Yeah, at that time, I honestly had kind of switched my mindset to just enjoying the game, you know what I mean?” Conley said. “I love to hoop, just as it is, so I get to go out here and just hoop every day. So I’m not going to trip if we’re winning 40 games or 60 games, if we’re in the playoffs or not. But I’m going to try to win and get this team into the playoffs. I’m not going to just sit here and lose. … That was kind of my mindset. Go out there, have fun and hoop. Be the best we can be and see what happens.”

That still is his mindset to a large degree. He goes into each day with a big smile on his face, eager to grow, improve and enjoy the game.

“I’m still out here with the guys, I’m doing something that not a lot of people get to do. Not only that, we’re working towards something — playoffs, Western Conference finals, championship aspirations — all these aspirations that we have together as a team,” Conley said. “That just kind of gets me up in the morning. Like, man, I’ve got something to reach for right now. It’s really cool.”

Past editions of Conley’s Corner:

‘Old Guy’ has still got game

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The Plymouth District Court has unsealed nearly 300 pages of records disclosing investigative efforts behind a Duxbury mother’s alleged murder of her three young children just two days ahead of her Superior Court arraignment on those charges.

Lindsay Clancy, 33, is accused of strangling her three children with exercise bands in the basement of their home at 47 Summer St. in Duxbury the night of Jan. 24 before jumping out of a window in an apparent suicide attempt.

Affidavits released Tuesday state that she also cut her wrists and neck before jumping from the second-floor window.

Plymouth DA Timothy Cruz issued an arrest warrant for Clancy the next day as she lay in Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston being treated for her injuries. She was charged in Plymouth District Court on Feb. 7 via video feed from her hospital bed.

A Plymouth grand jury indicted her on Sept. 15 with three counts of murder and strangulation for the deaths of Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, an infant. Clancy will be arraigned in the county Superior court on Thursday morning, once again from her hospital bed but this time from Tewksbury Hospital.

“In the present case, the court finds that the defendant’s physical and mental condition presents an overriding interest to schedule the arraignment at the Tewksbury Hospital,” Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan wrote in a Tuesday filing announcing the arrangement, adding that the patients there be afforded privacy, so public access to the proceedings would be done by digital telephony.

New details

The cache of previously impounded documents include 11 search warrant applications, along with their findings. Tthe earliest affidavits included were previously impounded, DA Cruz wrote in a Jan. 25 filing, because “the public disclosure of the facts contained herein may compromise the investigation.”

Among the new details:

Duxbury police dispatched all cruisers to the Duxbury home at 6:11 p.m., where responders found Lindsay Clancy on the ground to the left side of the house. As police were assessing Lindsay Clancy, her husband Patrick Clancy went inside to check on the children. Soon, the police radios broadcast that “Mr. Clancy was in the basement and something as wrong because his children would not wake up.”

Patrick Clancy would begin screaming and tell an arriving officer that “She killed the kids.” The first police officer affidavit then describes a hellish scene of discovering the kids — Dawson on his back in one room, Cora and Callan in another, bands around their necks and “blue and purple” in the face — in the basement and the life-saving efforts of the first responders.

Police conducted a full search of the home on Jan. 25 and recovered many items including: a series of home cameras; a receipt from ThreeV, which is the restaurant where Patrick Clancy went to pick up dinner Lindsay Clancy had ordered that night; a CVS bag with children’s laxative in it that Lindsay had told Patrick to pick up; a bloody knife; laptops, tablets and hard drives; the three exercise bands — yellow, black and blue; swabs from red-brown stains from several areas; some clothing; as well as a notebook.

This is a developing story.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — A barrage of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday crushed multiple residential buildings and buried families under rubble, as health officials in the besieged territory reported hundreds killed in the past day and the closure of medical facilities because of bomb damage and a lack of power.

The soaring death toll from Israel’s escalating bombardment is unprecedented in the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It augurs an even greater loss of life in Gaza once Israeli forces backed by tanks and artillery launch an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas militants.

Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the devastating Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on towns in southern Israel.

The Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 704 people over the past day, mostly women and children. The AP could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies daily figures from hospital directors.

Israel said Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting militants as they were preparing to launch rockets into Israel and striking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. Israel reported 320 strikes the day before.

Scenes of rescuers pulling dead and wounded out of large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings were repeated in main towns of central and south Gaza, where Israel had told civilians to take shelter. Graphic photos and video shot by The Associated Press showed rescuers digging to unearth small bodies from the ruins.

A father knelt on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah next to the bodies of three dead children cocooned in bloodied sheets. Later at the nearby morgue, workers prayed over 24 dead wrapped in body bags, several of them the size of small children.

Buildings collapsing on residents killed dozens at a time in several cases, witnesses said. Two families lost a total 47 members in a leveled home in Rafah, the Health Ministry said.

A strike on a four-story building in Khan Younis killed at least 32 people, including 13 members of the Saqallah family, said Ammar al-Butta, a relative who survived the airstrike. He said there were about 100 people sheltering in the building, including many who had evacuated from Gaza City.

“We thought that our area would be safe,” he said.

Another strike destroyed a bustling marketplace in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, witnesses said. AP photos showed the floor of a vegetable shop covered with blood.

In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more people remained buried. The legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage where workers dug through the dirt, concrete and rebar.

The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.

The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government.

As the death toll in Gaza spiraled, facilities to deal with the casualties were dwindling. More than half of primary health-care facilities, and roughly one of every three hospitals, stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.

Gaza’s five main hospitals were all filled beyond capacity, the territory’s health ministry said.

Hospital staff struggled to triage cases as constant waves of ambulances and private cars carrying wounded pulled up to hospital doors. The Health Ministry said many wounded are laid on the ground without even simple medical intervention and others wait for days for surgeries because there are so many critical cases.

While Israel has allowed a small number of trucks filled with aid to enter, it has barred deliveries of fuel to Gaza.

The rising toll has made it hard for Palestinians to bury the huge numbers of dead, with cemeteries being forced to excavate and reuse old plots and bury up to five bodies in one grave.

“Bodies pour in by the hundreds every day. We use every empty inch in the cemeteries,” said Abdel Rahman Mohamed, a volunteer who helps transfer bodies to Khan Younis’ main cemetery.

Israel says it does not target civilians and that Hamas militants are using them as cover for their attacks. Palestinian militants have fired over 7,000 rockets at Israel since the start of the war, Israel said, and Hamas said it fired a new barrage Tuesday morning.

“We continue to attack forcefully in Gaza City and its environs, where Hamas is building up its terrorist infrastructure, where Hamas is arraying its troops,” said Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. He again told Palestinians to head south “for your personal safety.”

On Monday, Hamas released two elderly Israeli women who were among the more than 200 people Israel says were taken to Gaza during the attack.

Appearing weak in a wheelchair and speaking softly, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz told reporters Tuesday that the militants beat her with sticks, bruising her ribs and making it hard to breathe as they kidnapped her. They drove her into Gaza, then forced her to walk several kilometers on wet ground to reach a network of tunnels that looked like a spider web, she said.

Once there, though, her treatment improved, she said.

Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper were freed days after an American woman and her teenage daughter were released. Hamas and other militants in Gaza are believed to have taken roughly 220 people, including an unconfirmed number of foreigners and dual citizens.

The Israeli military dropped leaflets in Gaza asking Palestinians to reveal information on the hostages’ whereabouts. In exchange, the military promised a reward and protection for the informant’s home.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas. Iranian-backed fighters around the region are warning of possible escalation, including the targeting of U.S. forces deployed in the Mideast, if a ground offensive is launched.

The U.S. has told Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and other groups not to join the fight. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire almost daily across the Israel-Lebanon border, and Israeli warplanes have struck targets in Syria, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank in recent days.

The Patriots have spent all season plugging holes on their injury-riddled offensive line, and Sunday they finally found a workable combination after bumping fourth-year lineman Mike Onwenu from right guard to right tackle.

Will that prove a long-term move or a temporary shift? The Patriots coaching staff isn’t sure, and it will depend in large part on the unit’s injury situation.

“We’ll have to see how it goes,” said offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien. “We practice tomorrow so we’ll see where everyone is relative to health and all those things as we move forward.”

Onwenu allowed a single pressure in 37 pass-blocking snaps against Buffalo and earned his highest single-game grade this season from Pro Football Focus. As an offensive line, the Patriots recorded a 50% success rate on running plays and allowed pressure on just 21.2% of their dropbacks.

The idea of Onwenu playing tackle isn’t new. The former sixth-round pick started 11 games at right tackle as a rookie in 2020, when he converted from career college guard, but he hadn’t take snaps at the position since 2021. Bill Belichick previously dismissed the idea of a shift back to tackle last season, when the Patriots experience similar offensive line issues and started four different players at right tackle.

“I think he’s built to play guard, he’s comfortable playing guard. He has a really good skill set in there,” Belichick said in Nov. 2022. “That’s where we’d like to play him, for sure.”

As injuries mounted this year that calculus began to change. Belichick said he approached Onwenu about moving from right guard early last week, and offensive line coach Adrian Klemm said it was something the coaches have had on their radar for a little while.

“It’s not like it just came out of the blue,” Klemm said. “As things developed, that developed.”

The main concern with bumping Onwenu to tackle wasn’t his ability to play the position, Klemm said, but his comfort level working back from an ankle injury. He still has work do to and progress to make, but the coaches felt he was up to the task and are open to playing him at tackle again.

“If it gives us an advantage, which it definitely did the last game, we’ll continue to do that,” Klemm said. “So there are a lot of different factors that factor into that and we’ll continue moving forward with whatever is best for the team.”