DALLAS – The Timberwolves had not had more than a single day off between games since early January. That means there hasn't been a lot of time to practice as the team has navigated one of its busiest stretches of the schedule.
But this weekend in Dallas, the Wolves had a few days between their game Friday in Memphis and Monday against the Mavericks. They took advantage of that time to get in a pair of practices, which came at the perfect time as coach Chris Finch and his staff try to get new acquisitions Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker up to speed with everything they need to learn about the Wolves' systems and terminology.
"I feel way better today than I did two days ago," Conley said.
As Finch and Conley both noted, there's a lot of similarity leaguewide in the kind of concepts teams employ, but terminology is different and Conley is trying to figure out what kind of rotations and schemes the Wolves run on defense. He is more concerned with getting up to speed on that end of the floor.
"Offense you pick up. You just go out and hoop sometimes and figure it out," Conley said. "But defensively you have to know exactly what's going on. One small mistake from one guy can result in a whole different reaction on our defense. I don't want to be that guy."
A lot of the talk since the three-team trade that dealt D'Angelo Russell to the Lakers has been about how Conley can affect the Wolves on the offensive end of the floor — how he will be a connector for Rudy Gobert, Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns, when Towns returns from a right calf injury.
But Conley is also going to make his mark on the Wolves defense. He has a wealth of experience playing with Gobert and navigating pick and roll coverages with him.
"He has the benefit of having played with Rudy, so rotating around Rudy, which is something everyone has to get used to, he's got corporate knowledge of that," Finch said.