Mike Conley Officially Rejoins Timberwolves

The Timberwolves sent Conley to Chicago in a salary-dump trade on February 3, with the Bulls flipping him to Charlotte along with Coby White a day later, just ahead of the Feb. 5 trade deadline. The Hornets subsequently cut him, which cleared the way for the 38-year-old to return to Minnesota.

NBA rules prohibit a player who is traded and then waived to immediately re-sign with the team that traded him away. However, that restriction only applied to the Bulls, not the Timberwolves, since Conley was traded twice.

Word broke when Conley was still on waivers that he planned to rejoin the Wolves. The team waited until today to complete the signing in order to maximize its cap/tax savings by taking the full allotment of 14 days to get back to the NBA-mandated roster minimum of 14 players. Minnesota still has an open spot on its 15-man roster after signing Conley.

Conley, who is in his 19th NBA season, became the Wolves’ starting point guard when they acquired him at the 2023 trade deadline and maintained that role through last season. He ceded his starting job to Donte DiVincenzo this past fall and has averaged a career-low 18.5 minutes per night in 44 outings (nine starts) so far this season. His 4.4 points and 2.9 assists per game are also career lows, as is his 32.2% field goal percentage.

Despite Conley’s declining production, there were rumblings ahead of the trade deadline that the team wasn’t eager to move the veteran due to his locker room leadership. With that in mind, being able to move off of the guard’s $10.8MM expiring contract and then bring him back on a prorated minimum-salary deal represents the best of both worlds for the Wolves.

Assuming Conley did sign for the minimum, which is a safe bet, he’ll earn $1,148,727 for the rest of the season while the Wolves carry a cap hit of $725,834.

Conley will likely seeing his playing time decline a little in the season’s final two months after Minnesota acquired guard Ayo Dosunmu from Chicago at the trade deadline.