Draymond Green’s return vs. Timberwolves brings back rougher memories

What a homestand. On Friday night, the Timberwolves celebrated “Naz Reid Towel Night.” On Sunday night, it was “Team Trowel Night” as they spent the first half throwing up enough bricks to build a new arena.

This has been a season of strange sentences for the Wolves, from “Fans worry about losing the first seed,” to “Naz Reid Towel Night” to “Timberwolves become Team Harmony.” Sunday night, they displayed their newfound maturity by coming back to defeat Golden State 114-110 at Target Center, in a game that reunited Rudy Gobert’s neck and Draymond Green’s forearm.

Green is proof that immature humans can thrive in pro sports, to a point, but maturity has its benefits, as the Wolves have demonstrated all season.

Before the game, Golden State coach Steve Kerr raved about Green’s reformed behavior, after reprising his criticism of Green’s worst acts.

When was the last time the Wolves had to worry about a player’s anger management? Last April, when these events occurred in a span of 16 days:

— Gobert punched teammate Kyle Anderson in the chest during a timeout.

— Forward Jaden McDaniels punched a wall, breaking his hand.

— Star Anthony Edwards flung a chair, striking arena employees in Denver, after his last-second miss ended the Wolves’ playoff series against the Nuggets.

Those moments provided a reminder of my strangest moment with the Timberwolves.

In December 1994, I was covering a game between the Wolves and Suns at Target Center. After a 103-89 loss, Wolves coach Bill Blair, conducting a postgame interview in the media room, said that his most talented player, J.R. Rider, needed to “grow up.”

I left the media room, found Rider in the locker room and asked if he had a response. Rider said, “Yeah, I have a response. Where are they, in the media room? Come on, I’ll show you my response.”

Rider walked into the media room and said: “I want to announce my own press conference. Call the news.”

That was awkward for me, but not unusual for the Wolves of the bad old days.

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Which is why this Wolves season has been so refreshing for fans and reporters.

Since the end of last season, and with the notable exception of Anthony Edwards trying to lead the league in technical fouls, the Timberwolves have been a remarkably cohesive and pleasant group, which contrasts them with Green and the Warriors.

The last time the Wolves and Warriors met, in San Francisco, McDaniels and the Warriors’ Klay Thompson got into a scrap and Green took advantage of the resulting chaos to put a chokehold on Gobert.

Green had previously sucker-punched teammate Jordan Poole, and would later take a swing at Jusuf Nurkic, earning another suspension.

“It was awful,” Kerr said of Green’s misdeeds. “It was dead wrong.”

Kerr said he thought Green’s “career was on the line. When you strike someone, when you grab someone by the throat, that’s different. Punching Jordan, that was different — and scary, and alarming. So I could not be more proud of Draymond for the way he has handled everything since the suspension.”

What’s even better than mitigating anger issues is to not have them. The Wolves haven’t had a moment this season that hinted at divisiveness, or even mild tension.

Asked whether this team has matured, Wolves coach Chris Finch said, “Absolutely. I mean, we still have a ways to go.”

He noted unforced turnovers, wasted possessions and shot selection, but he hasn’t had to break up any fights in 11 months.

Point guard Mike Conley, probably the Wolves’ most mature player, arrived in a trade last February. “I have seen some growth,” he said. “We’ve still got some growth to be made. There are some times out there where I’m looking at them like, ‘What are y’all doing.’...

“I think, for the most part, we’ve made leaps and bounds, gains over what we used to be. We just need to continue to mature, continue to understand time and score, and not turning it over late — which we did a great job of tonight.”