The Timberwolves are currently the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, and yet they may have scored the biggest win of the season over all-star weekend.

Minnesota agreed to a 2-year, $21 million extension with veteran guard Mike Conley, a source confirmed to the Pioneer Press on Monday.

That’s a massive value deal for the Timberwolves. Conley has been a lynchpin for Minnesota’s massive success. The point guard — with his ball movement generation, lethal outside shooting and capable defending — has proven to be the missing piece that tied the Timberwolves’ two-big experiment together and turned Minnesota from a laughingstock into a title contender.

He’s shooting a career-best 44 percent from deep this season while tallying 6.4 assists per game to just 1.1 turnovers, the second-best mark in the NBA behind only Tyus Jones.

The 36-year-old is also the likely solution for the late-game offensive struggles that have haunted Minnesota for the past two and a half seasons.

“There’s no new way to say how important he is,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said in early December. “He’s really (dang) important.”

Which made the thought of Conley leaving in free agency this summer a harrowing one for the Wolves, who dealt for Monte Morris at the trade deadline but didn’t have a succession plan in place at point guard if Conley left, nor the salary cap to ink a replacement.

And casual onlookers surmised Conley — who’s on the books for $24.3 million this season — could get roughly $20 million annually in any deal signed this summer. Minnesota hitting such a number would’ve meant making sacrifices elsewhere.

Which makes the deal the Wolves managed to strike with the veteran guard all the more important. That number allows them to be a little bit more flexible this offseason when trying to maintain or remake their roster, while knowing they have their floor general in place through the 2025-26 campaign.

For Conley, he likely took a pay cut to stay in Minnesota. But it has become abundantly clear he’s happy here and enjoys his teammates and his working relationship with Finch, who often places his full trust running the team on the floor general.

Conley — whose sole mission at this point of his career is to win a championship — also has never played in the NBA Finals, and this roster in Minnesota has the ingredients to do just that — if not this season, then sometime in the near future. But perhaps only if Conley was on board to properly guide the ship.

Luckily for the Wolves, that will indeed be the case for at least two more years.

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