Will Mike Conley play in Game 1 against the Mavericks? Injury update

The Minnesota Timberwolves head into their Western Conference Finals against the Dallas Mavericks looking to make history. The Minneapolis-based team, the second youngest franchise in the NBA, have only ever reached this stage once before and could be crowned conference champions - and reach the NBA Finals - for the first time ever. They start their series against the Mavs on Wednesday (22 May), possibly without Mike Conley.

Conley - Murray incident inspired Timberwolves against the Nuggets

The veteran point guard was in the news at the weekend after teaMMAte Anthony Edwards revealed after the Timberwolves’ second-round Game 7 win over the Denver Nuggets that Conley had been badmouthed by Jamal Murray at a bar several months earlier, an incident that spurred Minnesota on in the conference semifinals.

What injury does Conley have?

36-year-old Conley has played in 76 games for the Timberwolves so far this season, his highest number of appearances since 2012/13 with the Memphis Grizzlies. That includes all but one of his team’s postseason matches - game 5 against the Nuggets in the previous round.

The 2021 NBA All-Star sat out that matchup because of a right soleus strain but returned to play in the last two Games in the series, which Minnesota won to progress to the Western Conference Final.

But it seems as if Conley isn’t completely over the issue, with the latest injury reports revealing his questionable status for game 1 against the Mavericks.

What did Conley say about his injury and availability?

The player himself is, however, confident of being available to help his team in their quest for a maiden title.

“It’s getting better. With these things, you play 38 minutes, it’s going to be sore for the next couple of days. If you get a lot of treatment, a lot of rest, like I’ve had over the last few days, it feels really good going into the game; it’s just going to be one of those cycles you have to deal with.

“It honestly depends on if you can get through the Game without having any small setback,” Conley explained. “You have some movements that really kind of jar it or cause the pain to go up really quickly, and it stays there for a little while. In some Games, I get through a whole Game and don’t have any setbacks. You just kind of keep building upward and forward. So I’m just trying to stack as many of those days together.”

Whether Conley ultimately plays or not very much seems to be a case of “wait and see,” as it so often is these days. But it appears as if he will be prepared to play through the pain barrier with the Timberwolves closer than ever before to an NBA title.