On Wednesday morning, Minnesota Timberwolves players were contemplating what life without Mike Conley would look like after he was traded to the Chicago Bulls. They lamented the loss of one of their emotional leaders and how much they would miss his overall presence on the day-to-day landscape.
“Everybody focused on what he says, but more so he’s always an ear to listen,” Wolves guard Donte DiVincenzo said. “Always has a perspective that you respect and appreciate so that doesn’t change in terms of always being able to talk to him, but it’s just a little bit different, felt a little bit weird today.”
The Wolves posted a goodbye message on social media. It looked like Conley’s hugely impactful stay in Minnesota was over.
It turns out they won’t be missing him for long.
Conley plans to return to the Timberwolves in the near future, team and league sources confirmed to The Athletic, thanks to a loophole in the collective bargaining agreement which prevents players from rejoining the team that just traded them for one year.
The rule is often linked to Gary Payton, who was traded by Boston to Atlanta in 2005, waived and then immediately re-signed by the Celtics. Critics called that a way for teams to circumvent the salary cap, and so the league changed the rules to keep teams from using it as a tool to avoid luxury-tax payments and other punitive measures.
The way around this restriction is through another transaction. If a player is traded a second time and then gets waived, he then becomes cleansed of the initial transaction and is free to return to his original team. When the Bulls traded Conley with Coby White to the Charlotte Hornets, it opened the door for Conley to come back to Minnesota.
The Hornets immediately waived Conley, who has not set foot in Chicago or Charlotte since this whirlwind started. At 38, Conley was hoping to finish his career with the Timberwolves. His family has settled in nicely in Minnesota, and the thought of having to move to another city for the rest of the season while his wife and children stayed here was not a fun one. But when his initial trade to Chicago was structured as one, three-way transaction with Detroit rather than two separate trades, it looked like he was not going to be able to come back.
But when the surging Hornets went looking for guard help, the Bulls offered up White. Chicago also got Ousmane Dieng and three second-round picks and threw in Conley to help make the money work. All of a sudden, he was free.
Conley is unlikely to rejoin the Wolves immediately, per team sources. The Wolves are just under the first apron, and every day they keep his spot open, it makes it a little easier for them to stay that way. The Wolves are trying to retain enough financial flexibility to potentially sign a veteran on the buyout market. Trading Conley saved them $20 million in luxury-tax payments and unlocked an entirely different class of players they can consider.
If they had stayed above the first apron, league rules prevented them from signing a bought-out player who made more than the midlevel exception this season ($14 million). Keeping Conley on ice for right now will help keep the Wolves under that apron, and allow them to sign a bigger name, who made a bigger salary on his previous team, than they would have otherwise.
Whenever Conley does return, he will be coming back to a different landscape in the locker room. The Wolves swung another trade with Chicago on Thursday to add guard Ayo Dosunmu to bolster their struggling bench. Conley was averaging 18.5 minutes per game, but the bulk, if not all, of those minutes could now go to Dosunmu.
No matter how that shakes out, the Wolves will be ecstatic to have one of their favorite teammates back in the fold.
“Hopefully we can get him back,” Wolves’ star Anthony Edwards said after a win over the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday. “I don’t really know how it goes, but I keep hearing he can come back, so hopefully he will. Hopefully he sees this. We want you back, Mike. He know we miss him.”