MINNEAPOLIS — Monte Morris would be lying if he claimed this very situation wasn’t one of the first hypotheticals that occurred to him after the trade.
“I thought about it,” he admitted as his Minnesota Timberwolves were preparing to face the Nuggets in the playoffs. “I’m like, ‘That’ll be a great story.’”
Matching up against his former team in the playoffs was an impossibility at the halfway point of this season, when Morris was playing for the lottery-bound Detroit Pistons. It was a distant idea on Feb. 7, when he got traded to the Timberwolves to supply point guard depth as they geared up for a deep run. It’s a reality now, with Minnesota and Denver entrenched in a second-round series.
The man behind that trade, of course, was the man whose fingerprints are all over this rematch. Morris said the idea of a Nuggets vs. Timberwolves series even came up in conversation after the trade with Tim Connelly, the Denver-turned-Minnesota president of basketball operations who drafted Morris back in 2017.
“You can’t get around it,” Morris said. “The best two teams in the league were gonna run into each other eventually. They brought me over here for playoff basketball, so I was just trying to get back in shape and everything for moments like this.”
He spent the first five seasons of his career in Denver, playing 280 games and starting 105. He averaged 10.5 points and 3.7 assists. He grew into a fan favorite. Consider this, then, a warm if competitive reunion for Morris rather than a thorny grudge match. He still talks with Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Aaron Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. regularly. “Just checking in with everybody,” he said. “Seeing how their family and stuff are doing. Everything ain’t gotta be around basketball.”
The role Morris plays in Minnesota isn’t substantial enough for him to be a factor in the series result. The Timberwolves only needed two points from him the first two games to take a commanding lead on the Nuggets. But his minutes, however limited, are integral in steadying the workload of starters such as Mike Conley.
Those first two games at Ball Arena also gave Morris an opportunity to reflect on his time in Denver, when he was a building block but not a cog in the final product that is the banner hanging over this series.
“I feel like I had a good run here,” Morris said. “We didn’t win a championship, but we had chances. Good teams. Some injuries kind of deterred that, but I feel like around this time, the healthiest team will normally, usually win it. It’s cool, man. Me and Coach Malone got a lot of love for each other. Speak all the time. During the games, we talk and chatter. And over the phone. So it’s cool to come back in this building. It feels like home still.”