Mike Conley says the quiet part out loud about the Timberwolves

Media day for the Minnesota Timberwolves took place on Thursday, and fans finally got to see and hear from the players ahead of the start of preseason. With the Wolves heading off to Abu Dhabi to begin preseason, their media day and training camp is taking place earlier than every other team.

Players, coaches and front office staff all gathered to meet with media members and share their thoughts heading into a highly anticipated season in Minnesota. As expected, there were plenty of good sound bytes and entertaining moments throughout the day.

But one of the most interesting quotes came from Mike Conley when he was asked about how much he valued winning a championship. Mike answered, “I think that last year our team, if we were healthy, we were a team that could have been the Denver Nuggets of last year.”

Mike Conley believes a healthy Timberwolves could have won a championship

Of course, Conley is saying what many who watched the Timberwolves last year would think, but not necessarily say out loud. Minnesota boasted a loaded roster and found some consistency toward the end of March and April once Karl-Anthony Towns returned to the rotation.

However, the progress they were making was quickly halted with the injuries to Naz Reid and Jaden McDaniels at the end of the regular season. As a result, they were eliminated in the first round by Denver. Despite this, the Wolves still gave the eventual champions a very tough five-game series.

There is certainly reason to believe that if the chips had fallen even slightly differently, Minnesota could have found themselves in the NBA Finals instead of the Nuggets. Had they won their play-in game against the Lakers, the Timberwolves would have had an excellent shot of replicating the same run to the Western Conference Finals that LA made.

With a healthy roster, the Timberwolves would have been a scary matchup for Denver. This is a sentiment even shared by some of the players from that Nuggets team, as Bruce Brown revealed over the summer. If their injury luck improves in the coming season, Timberwolves fans should be excited about what this team can achieve.