Two nights after their home unbeaten streak to start the season ended at seven games, the Timberwolves kept Memphis winless at their FedEx Forum with Sunday’s 119-97 victory.
The Grizzlies now have lost eight consecutive home games in a season where they are 3-13 with star Ja Morant suspended until mid-December and injuries galore.
The Wolves on Sunday reversed course after Friday’s 124-111 loss to Sacramento ended their Target Center perfection and a stretch where they had won 10 of 11 games.
The Wolves improved to 12-4 — still best in the West — on a night when veteran point guard Mike Conley made six three-pointers and had 18 points and 10 assists for a double-double return to the city where he played his first 12 NBA seasons.
He became the seven player in Wolves history to make six threes and get 10 assists in a game. The others: D’Angelo Russell, Mo Williams, Kevin Love, Chauncey Billups and Stephon Marbury.
Defensively, starter Nickeil Alexander-Walker successfully chased Grizzlies scorer Desmond Bane everywhere Bane went.
Bane finished with 13 points on 5-for-16 shooting and a flagrant foul 1 for an encounter with Wolves forward Naz Reid. Memphis star Jaren Jackson Jr. didn’t fare much better. He went 4-for-14 and scored 18 points.
Add it up and Bane and Jackson went a combined 9-for-30.
Conley was one of five Wolves — four of them starters — who scored in double figures. Anthony Edwards led everybody with 24 points. Karl-Anthony Towns scored 18 and Rudy Gobert 13 despite each player having some second-half foul trouble. Reid scored 12 off the bench.
Slow to start too many games this season, the Wolves led 15-3 in the opening three minutes of their wire-to-wire victory. They added a 9-2 run to start a second quarter, later had a 10-0 burst and led 60-43 by halftime.
They led by as many as 26 points in the second half. A Grizzlies 8-0 run pulled them with 12 points at 102-90 with fewer than six minutes left.
But Walker and then Conley made consecutive three-pointers coming out of Wolves coach Chris Finch’s timeout for an 8-0 run of their own. The Wolves quickly turned an eight-point lead to 20 with fewer than four minutes left.
They did so in arena where they had lost eight consecutive games against the Grizzlies, who have won 51 and 56 games the last two seasons and beat the Wolves in a 2022 first-round playoff series.
But their star Morant now still has nine games left on a season-starting, 25-game league for conduct detrimental to the league after he displayed a gun on social media.
The Grizzlies on Sunday also played without six injured players including Marcus Smart, Steven Adams and Luke Kennard.
Now 36, Conley starred for the Grizzlies before he was traded to Utah and then Minnesota. He’s Memphis’ all-time leader in games played with 788, points with 11,733, three-pointers made with 1086, assists with 4508 and steals with 1,161.
The Star Tribune did not send the writer of this article to the game. This was written using a broadcast, interviews and other material.