Deep Dive: How More Off-Ball Duties Have Rejuvenated Mike Conley's Game
Minnesota's veteran point guard is doing fewer point guard things.
Mike Conley arrived in Minnesota with stereotypes shadowing every step through his new home. He was the floor general, the Rudy Gobert whisperer, the one who could step into the role at the head of the Timberwolves’ offensive snake and make it run smoother. Throughout his long and storied tenure with the Memphis Grizzlies and his shorter but still impactful stay with the Utah Jazz, that’s who he was. The unflappable adult who drives offense as a pure point guard.
Those traits haven’t slipped through the 35-year-old’s grasp in the 22 games he has played in Wolves colors, but in order to reinvigorate a career that was ever so slightly starting to feel the cool touch of Father Time, he’s been wielded as an off-ball weapon on both ends of the floor. Not the kind of bit-part minimization that often comes with stuffing an aging veteran in a corner and letting him rot, but an integral part in trying to organize Minnesota’s chaotic season.
Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch still utilizes Conley’s ability to run a silky pick-and-roll with Gobert or puncture the internal organs of a defense with velvety floaters and nifty finishes at the cup. That’s the way he has always buttered his bread. Conley has seen enough winters to know how invigorating a new spring dawn can be, though, and with Anthony Edwards, Kyle Anderson and Karl-Anthony Towns beside him to take away some of those ball-handling duties, Conley has felt the sun shine brighter on his game than it has in years.
In his relatively small sample size in the Twin Cities, Conley is averaging 13.6 points, 3.3 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.3 steals. Numbers befitting of an aging fourth option — nothing to yodel from mountain peaks about. However, as it stands, Conley’s efficiency is more than just a renaissance, it’s new ground being broken. Never in his 16-year career has he posted a higher field goal percentage (45.1%) or 3-point percentage (41.6%) over a season than he has for the Timberwolves. And, not since his Memphis grit-and-grind days has he contributed so heavily to a stringent defensive scheme.
According to Cleaning The Glass, the Timberwolves are currently 9.2 points per 100 possessions better when Conley is on the floor compared to when he is sitting, an encapsulation of his importance that ranks in the 93rd percentile leaguewide. They outscore opponents by 6.3 points per 100 possessions (91st percentile) in those minutes and strangle their opponents to 2.9 fewer points per 100 possessions (76th percentile) when his wizened feet are on the hardwood.
The sample size vixens are certainly meddling with those numbers — even with his career taking a late upswing it seems unlikely he’d have a career-best efficiency and on-off impact over an 82-game stretch — but there is something to be said about a changing role contributing to his mini-quantum leap.
The Specified Shooter
The biggest difference in Minnesota Mike compared to Memphis Mike and Mountain Mike is the frequency with which he is launching from behind the 3-point arc. With more time to corner-dwell with the ball in other player’s hands, the former Ohio State star has found himself morphing into the type of movement shooter that spends just as much of his minutes flying off screens and relocating around the perimeter as he does initiating offense.
As it stands, Conley has taken 56 percent of his field goal attempts from behind the arc with the Timberwolves. In his 12 seasons with the Grizzlies, he attempted 24.2 percent of his field goals from deep, albeit in a changing league that was still in the infancy of the long-range shooting revolution. However, even in Utah when the long-range boom was well and truly underway, he attempted 48.5 percent of his shots from deep over 3 and a half seasons.
Conley has always been a reliable sniper, his 38.1 percent career clip proves this isn’t a story of extra leeway to shoot them parlaying into an extreme spike in efficiency, but with fewer on-ball reps he has been forced to find a way to fortify his value in different ways. That fortification has come in the form of high-frequency launching, and its walls are feeling more impenetrable by the game.
Sometimes, it’s something as simple as floating into the corner to punish a defense from directing its attention to Edwards.
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