‘I love him’: The Timberwolves again want to win it for Mike Conley

During the Timberwolves’ postseason run a year ago, Mike Conley made a request of his teammates: Win for him.

Conley, 37, had reached the conference finals only one previous time in his career, and he knew how precious and rare that kind of run could be.

Anthony Edwards, 23, is at the other end of his career spectrum, with over a decade’s worth of playoff runs in his future. After the Wolves lost to the Mavericks last season, Edwards promised his team, and Conley specifically, “We’ll be back.”

Even though Conley knows from experience how hard it can be to return to this stage, there was something about the conviction and belief Edwards showed that made Conley believe him.

“What you learn about him, he believes everything he says, no matter what it is,” Conley said. “And at that moment last year, I believed him, I believed that we’d have another opportunity together and this wasn’t the end of the road.”

It wasn’t, and now the Wolves are back in the Western Conference finals for the second consecutive season and the third time in franchise history, and Conley’s there for the third time in his career. Conley inspires the kind of reverence and adoration from his teammates that’s rare for players to express, even when they like each other. As Rudy Gobert said in his news conference after Game 5 against the Warriors, “I love him.”

“More than anything, I just want to win for him,” said Gobert, who was also teammates with Conley in Utah. “I just know how much he cares about winning.”

Conley famously has never received a technical foul in the NBA, and he’s always the same mild-mannered person in front of cameras and recorders. But that isn’t because he lacks a competitive fire. Quite the opposite. A seething competitiveness exists in Conley; he just doesn’t let it burst out on the floor.

This season was “one of the toughest ones I’ve had to deal with,” Conley said in April. Multiple wrist and hand injuries, along with other injuries along the way, hampered his production early in the season. He doubted he’d get back to being the player he knew he could be.

“The game started to slowly come back together, and it’s easier to be confident when you know you’re not feeling something crazy every time you flick your wrist or dribble the ball or play defense,” Conley said previously.

Which is why it was great for fans and teammates to see the way Conley played in the Warriors series. In Game 3, he put his body on the line to defend Buddy Hield in the closing minutes. He joked afterward that he drew an offensive foul by falling down on one play just because the didn’t have any energy left. Then in Game 5, Conley had his best offensive game of this postseason: 16 points, eight assists, six rebounds.

“His presence is unbelievable, man,” Julius Randle said. “He’s as steady as they come. … His ability to communicate with everybody, each individual on the team in different ways, and bring the best out of everybody, how he competes every single night — he’s so versatile and does so many things and he’s just a great basketball mind.”

There’s a selfless quality about Conley that has made him one of the most popular teammates in the NBA. He rarely makes the game about him, which is why when he spoke to the team last season, it resonated so much. Teammates knew how badly Conley wanted it. This postseason, he didn’t have to address the team. Players just naturally want to win for him, especially after the difficult season he had. He didn’t let players in on how much he was struggling, because he had to set a positive tone for the group.

“Mike’s always that guy that will pick us up,” Donte DiVincenzo said. “Mike’s always the dude that, you miss a shot, shoot the next one. ‘I don’t care if it doesn’t go in, shoot the next one.’ He always wants you to be the player that he knows that you are. So to see him perform like this on the biggest stage is amazing, because you know what Mike is. Everybody knows what Mike is.”

Conley is now a player who has reached two consecutive Western Conference finals after wondering if he would ever get there again. That first trip came in 2013, and in 2015 Conley’s Grizzlies lost in the second round to the Warriors. After Game 5 Wednesday, he was asked what the 2015 version of himself would think of this moment.

“I wouldn’t have thought I’d been still playing, honestly,” Conley said. “Having lost to them 10-plus years ago with a team that we felt was championship-ready at that moment hurt a lot, and then it took me another nine, 10 years to even get back to competing again at that same level, so just happy to be back in this situation with these guys. Wouldn’t want to be with anybody else.”