Anthony Edwards scored 24 points over the final 16 and a half minutes of basketball. Nikola Jokic scored 61 points while playing 34 straight minutes.
Minnesota trailed by eight with five minutes to play in regulation, then led by six with two minutes to play in the first overtime.
And all of that paled in comparison to the chaos that took place over the final 18 seconds of the second overtime in Denver in Tuesday’s nationally-televised affair.
Minnesota inbounded the ball, trailing the Nuggets 139-138. Edwards got the ball and was almost immediately doubled, a look Denver employed often down the stretch. Edwards made a number of nice reads out of the double team Tuesday, but this bounce pass went to no one. Russell Westbrook scooped up the loose ball and off he and Christian Braun went on a 2-on-1 fastbreak.
They passed the ball back and forth until Westbrook had a wide-open layup at the rim that should’ve put Denver up three with nine ticks to play … but he came up well short and it clanked off the bottom of the iron. Nickeil Alexander-Walker grabbed the rebound and back Minnesota went the other way.
Mike Conley got the ball to Edwards, who encroached the paint as the final seconds waned off the clock, and kicked out to an open Alexander-Walker.
Alexander-Walker was brilliant Tuesday, knocking down five triples while also tallying eight assists and seven rebounds. But his attempt at the buzzer hit the front iron. It appeared as though the Wolves had dropped a thriller … until they hadn’t.
The ref standing right next to Alexander-Walker signaled a foul. Sure enough, a hard-charging Westbrook hit Alexander-Walker’s arm and body as he frantically tried to close out on the shooter. So, with 0.1 seconds to play in the second overtime, Alexander-Walker went to the line for three free-throws.
He swished the first two, securing Minnesota’s 140-139 victory, the Wolves’ fourth-straight victory in perhaps the wildest game of the entire NBA regular season.
Minnesota was without Donte DiVincenzo and Naz Reid, who were suspended as a result of their roles in the fight with Detroit on Sunday. Denver was sans Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., both of which were surprising absences. Murray experienced hamstring tightness on Tuesday, while Porter Jr. missed the game for personal reasons.
Denver doesn’t possess anything resembling Minnesota’s depth. So its short-handed roster had to be carried by Jokic and Aaron Gordon. The Serbian MVP candidate had 10 rebounds and 10 assists to go with his gaudy point total, which was a new career high for him. Jokic didn’t sit a second minute after halftime, as Denver coach Mike Malone went all in on trying to pull off the victory.
Yet Jokic never seemed to fatigue. He continued to generate good shots for himself and his teammates. Unfortunately for him, the only teammate knocking any of those looks down was Gordon. The forward, who was absent for last month’s meeting in which Minnesota thrashed the Nuggets in Denver, finished with 30 points and eight rebounds. He and Jokic sparked a flurry to open the fourth quarter that quickly moved the Nuggets from down five to up two.
Minnesota was stuck in neutral for the next four minutes of action, until its best player finally came to life. Edwards was largely a bystander for the first 40-plus minutes of Tuesday’s affair. But he nailed a triple to trim Minnesota’s deficit to eight with fewer than seven minutes to go in the fourth. Then he used his gravity ...
