Wolves aim to bolster playoff positioning against Nets

The Minnesota Timberwolves had their 89th off day of the season on Wednesday. Suffice it to say it was the one they enjoyed — and needed — the most.

The Timberwolves (44-32) will look to build on a chaotic victory on Thursday night when they continue a five-game road trip by taking on the Brooklyn Nets (25-51) in New York for the first clash of the season between the two teams.

Minnesota overcame a monster performance by the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic and emerged victorious in one of the wildest games of the regular season on Tuesday, with Nickeil Alexander-Walker draining two free throws with one-tenth of a second left in the second overtime to lift Minnesota to a 140-139 win.

The dramatic win by the Timberwolves may resonate well beyond the viral excitement it generated.

Minnesota appeared as if it would be on the wrong end of an instant classic in the waning seconds of the final overtime. After Jokic — who also had 10 rebounds and 10 assists — scored the final two of his career-high 61 points by sinking a pair of free throws to put the Nuggets up 139-138, Russell Westbrook stole a pass by Anthony Edwards but squandered a chance to ice the game by missing a layup.

Alexander-Walker collected the rebound to begin a frantic sequence that ended with Westbrook fouling Alexander-Walker as he missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer. However, officials added a tenth of a second to the clock, allowing Alexander-Walker to hit the first two shots before purposely missing the third.

“That might have been the best game of my life that I’ve been a part of,” Edwards said.

The win lifted the Timberwolves into a tie for the sixth and final guaranteed playoff spot in the Western Conference alongside the Memphis Grizzlies. Minnesota and Memphis are a half-game behind the Golden State Warriors and a half-game ahead of the Los Angeles Clippers.

“We’re like cardiac kids,” said Timberwolves guard Mike Conley, who pressured Westbrook at the rim on his unsuccessful layup attempt. “We got a little bit of that in us, but we operate in a weird way. We operate well in chaos, it seems like.”

There isn’t much drama surrounding the Nets, who have seemingly telegraphed their lottery-bound intentions by collecting 13 draft picks in the trades that shipped Mikal Bridges, Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith — three of their top eight scorers during the 2023-24 campaign — in a series of deals Brooklyn pulled off between last June and December.

But the Nets continued displaying their pesky nature on Monday, when they pieced together their first winning streak of March by overcoming a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to upset the Dallas Mavericks 113-109.

Brooklyn is just 13-31 since Jan. 1 but has recorded wins over the playoff-bound Milwaukee Bucks, Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers while also beating the Mavericks and Atlanta Hawks, each of whom are vying for play-in spots.

“It’s the end of the season and we’re still showing grit, still showing that we want to play and want to win,” Nets forward Jalen Wilson said.

–Field Level Media