After Sunday’s mystifying home loss to Portland, the Minnesota Timberwolves responded with a critical road victory over the Brooklyn Nets Tuesday night, leaving Barclays Center with a 107-102 win.
The win puts the Wolves at 40-40 with two games to go: Saturday at San Antonio and Sunday at Target Center in Minneapolis versus the Pelicans. Minnesota, in ninth place, was 1.5 games ahead of 10th place Oklahoma City with OKC playing late at Golden State Tuesday night.
Minnesota will be a half-game behind seventh place New Orleans if they lose to the Kings Tuesday night, and as of this writing they were trailing by 19 points in the fourth quarter.
Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns came up big late. With 19.4 seconds to go in the fourth quarter, Edwards drove to the basket and drew a foul, then hit two free throws to give Minnesota a 104-100 lead.
Before that, it was Karl-Anthony Towns with six straight points after Edwards hit a long jumper for a 96-95 lead as the Wolves and Nets traded punches in the final five minutes.
A quick Nets bucket cut the lead to two and Mike Conley was only able to hit one of two free throws with 12.6 seconds left. Edwards then blocked Spencer Dinwiddie’s 3-point attempt out of bounds and then secured the defensive rebound after Dinwiddie missed a corner 3 with 2.5 seconds to go.
Towns finished with 22 points, 14 rebounds and five assists. Edwards had 23 points and three other Minnesota players finished in double figures: Mike Conley (18), Jaden McDaniels (15 and Rudy Gobert (12).
Dinwiddie led the Nets with 30 points.
