Advertisement

Timberwolves Mike Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker make challenging in-season life adjustment to Minnesota

jace frederick, pioneer press
·3 min read

Mike Conley is glad he got this experience — or at least he says so. Over the years, he’s watched teammates get dealt in the middle of the season and have their lives flipped upside down on the fly.

Now it’s his turn. Conley was traded last week from Utah to Minnesota. So, too, was Nickeil Alexander-Walker. The two joined the Timberwolves in the middle of the team’s road trip. That’s not entirely foreign to players. You join a team and immediately get back into the routine of hopping on flights to stay in hotels in visiting cities with your teammates and play in games.

It’s when you return “home” — your new home — that things get weird.

“It does kind of hit you a little bit,” Conley said. “When we get off the plane, everybody is driving back to their houses, and I’m driving back to the hotel.”

In that way, Alexander-Walker said landing in the Twin Cities late Monday night was “surreal.”

“Just because everything felt new. Usually when you come home from the road trip, you get in your car, you go home, you get in your own bed,” Alexander-Walker said. “For me, it’s just like we’re back on the road again. Just kind of settling in, it just didn’t feel like … honestly this time last week if you were to tell me this was going to happen, I would think you’re joking. Just the unexpected change.”

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch discussed that reality with Paul Allen on KFXN-FM 100.3 Thursday. Players’ lives can change in the blink of an eye.

“There’s so many things that go through these players’ minds at the trade deadline. It’s very anxiety provoking. You’ve got to feel for them,” Finch said. “I know it’s part of the business, I know they’re making a lot of money, but you’re still uprooting someone in the middle of their life and planting them somewhere else. And if that place is completely foreign or strange to them, just the thought of that if you had to do it yourself, it’s not the most comfortable feeling.”

Conley’s family — he and wife Mary Peluso have three young boys — will stay in Utah for a while so his kids can finish out school while Conley gets things settled for everyone in Minnesota.

“By the time they do come in a month or so, two months, they can kind of have a place to be and have a little bit of a footprint here,” Conley said. “It’s just one of those things we’re going to take slow. I’m sure they’re excited, my kids are excited to be here. They want to come tomorrow. But we’re going to have to hold them off a little bit and see how it goes.”

The Wolves have tried to make the transition for their new guards as smooth as possible. Alexander-Walker said Wolves head equipment manager and travel coordinator Peter Warden has been “great,” as has everyone else in the organization.

Alexander-Walker and Conley both said they’re happy to be in Minnesota.

“Now that we’re all back home, this is home now. This is like ‘OK, this is where I’ll be practicing. This is my locker. These are the people I’ll be seeing every day,’ ” Conley said. “You get a sense of the family and the culture, and it’s like, ‘OK, we’re here. Let’s go.’ Just excited, there’s excitement around the building. They’ve treated both Nickeil and I so well. We’re just looking forward to building from here.”

Related Articles