Timberwolves starting point guard Mike Conley’s pre-existing and troublesome left-wrist injury kept him from handling a basketball most of the summer.

It also kept him off the golf course much of it, too.

“I was depressed,” he said. “I didn’t golf all summer. I wasn’t able to. I was in and out of casts and braces and stuff like that, just trying to get it to calm down.”

It is a ligament injury, what Conley called an old tear from years ago that’s misplaced and complicated enough he said he wishes the issue, at age 37, were as simple as an old man’s arthritis.

“If I want to fix it, I’ll have to get surgery,” Conley said.

But later.

“When I’m 50, I’ll get surgery, not right now,” he said. “The surgery is a little bit complex and I’ve been playing with it for years, so I feel like I’ll just finish it.”

He often wears tape or a wrap around that shooting wrist. He has played all four games in the Wolves’ 2-2 start but shot 1-for-7 from the field at the Los Angeles Lakers, 2-for-9 against both Sacramento and Toronto, 2-for-6 against Dallas.

That makes him better on three-pointers than inside the line — 27.3% to 22.6% — so far.

The Wolves lost Monday to a Mavericks team that beat them in five games in the Western Conference finals. On Friday, they have a rematch against a Denver team they beat in seven games in a second-round playoff game last spring.

Tip-off is 8:30 p.m. at Target Center, and the game is nationally televised by ESPN.

Conley said he fell hard on the wrist last season, “like you sprain your wrist all the time,” he said.

“But when you have old bones like me, you have old injuries and stuff that will pop up,” he said. “That happened at some point in the summer.”

Conley said he barely touched a ball all summer until just before training camp.

“I’m just trying to work back the strength of it,” Conley said. “That’s the biggest thing. The pain and stuff is gone. But there are some times when I’ll shoot it and think, `Ah, that’s good,’ and it’ll be like two feet short. So you’re just trying to gauge the differences and work through that as the season goes forward.”

Wolves coach Chris Finch said he didn’t notice an issue with Conley’s wrist until last summer, when he said “it really flared up on him” but said it has since calmed down.

“He’s just working out some stiffness in there,” Finch said. “I haven’t really noticed it until this summer and preseason. I’m sure it’s affecting his shot to some degree. His shots all look good. They look like they’re going to go down. A lot have rattled out, but that’s really the only thing I’ve noticed.”

Conley was asked if it’s good, old arthritis.

“I wish it was just arthritis, that’d be easier,” he said. “I’m not worried about it. I’m just getting adjusted. I’ve been through it before. It’s going to be ugly for a week or so and then we’ll figure it out.”