At the team dinner, on the night before the first official practice, point guard Mike Conley led a discussion of what steps the Wolves must take on the floor and in their minds to get over the conference-final hump.

"What's our goal? Are we coming here to put on a show, perform? Or are we trying to win a championship? What are we doing? And the consensus is, we're trying to win a championship," Conley said. "Ant, if you want to win a championship, we expect you to guard like you're a top-five perimeter defender in the league, which we believe you are."

Coach Chris Finch, asked on Tuesday for an assessment of Edwards' buy-in to the goal of even better defense than the Wolves displayed last season, said he has "no doubt" that his best player is serious about it.

"We've talked a lot about consistency, and the consistency of habit as one of the areas of improvement, no matter what it pertains to. Ant has got to measure up here. We might do different things with matchups that put him in more high-leverage situations, which we know he can do and he enjoys," Finch said.

"It's an NBA mantra that if you do so much on offense, you're allowed to not play defense. The best teams don't do that. They do what's necessary as much as they possibly can."