This was a huge Sunday in NBA action as there were two game sevens on the slate with New York taking on Indiana and the Nuggets welcoming the Timberwolves to the Ball Arena for the second game on the schedule.
Let’s recap both games below as we now have our Western and Eastern Conference matchups set.
DENVER — — Anthony Edwards overcame a slow start and the Timberwolves roared back from a 20-point second-half deficit to eliminate the reigning NBA champion Denver Nuggets 98-90 in a Game 7 Minnesota masterpiece on Sunday night.
The Timberwolves overcame a 15-point halftime deficit — the largest comeback in a Game 7 in NBA playoff history — behind Edwards, who had just four points, no rebounds and three assists at halftime but finished with 16 points, eight boards and seven assists.
His impact belied his 6-of-24 shooting that included a 2-for-10 3-point performance.
“It was tough, man, because I couldn’t find myself, my rhythm tonight,” Edwards said. “So I just had to trust my teammates. … I just had to make the right plays throughout the rest of the game. I did that and my teammates made shots. Big shout-out to those guys.”
As Minnesota took control late, over and over Edwards denied Jamal Murray, who had 24 points by halftime and finished with 35.
“There’s more ways to win the basketball game when you’re just not an offensive player,” Edwards said. “I’m not one-dimensional. I’m not just a guy who can score. I’m a guy who — whoever their best guard is, I can go lock him down. I feel like I did that on Jamal in the fourth quarter — in the third quarter and fourth quarter — and that’s what turned the game around.”
As the seconds ticked away, Edwards dribbled the ball upcourt and took time to wave good-bye to the stunned crowd at Ball Arena, where the Nuggets’ 33-8 record this season was second-best in the league but where the Wolves won three times this series.
The Wolves, who got 23 points each from Karl-Anthony Towns and Jaden McDaniels, advanced to the Western Conference finals for the first time in exactly 20 years. They’ll face the Dallas Mavericksbeginning Wednesday night at Target Center.
“It feels great,” Wolves center Rudy Gobert said. “Beating a team like they are, an incredible team, a championship team, with the best player in the world, it feels good.
Behind Murray’s fantastic start, the Nuggets raced to a 53-38 halftime lead and Murray’s 3-pointer with 10:50 left in the third pushed Denver’s lead to 58-38.
The Wolves turned to their defense, the NBA’s stingiest, to get back into the game, and they closed the quarter on a 28-9 run to pull to 67-66 heading into the fourth.
Gobert gave the Wolves their first lead since the first quarter with a bucket to start the fourth and when Towns picked up his fifth foul, Naz Reid, the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year, was spectacular at both ends of the floor to keep Minnesota ahead.
In one crucial stretch that started with Minnesota ahead 85-82, Reid had two free throws and a dunk before feeding Edwards for a back-breaking 3-pointer that put the Wolves ahead 92-82 with three minutes left.
Murray, coming off a 4-for-18 shooting performance in the Nuggets’ 115-70 loss in Game 6 — the largest ever in the playoffs by a reigning champion — made 13 of 27 shots for 35 points. Jokic added 34 points to go with 19 rebounds but the duo got little help as no other Denver players reached double figures in points.
“So much was being placed on their shoulders,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “We’re expecting Jokic and Jamal to continue pulling rabbits out of their hat, man, and somebody else has got to give some help.”
This marked the Timberwolves’ first Game 7 since beating Sacramento in the second round exactly 20 years earlier. That’s the only other time they reached the conference finals. The Nuggets were playing in their fifth Game 7 in the last six seasons and were seeking their third trip to the conference finals in that span.
“That was a hell of a series,” Malone said. “They gave us all we could handle and they ended up winning Game 7 on our home court, which is a tough one to swallow. But we’ll be back.”
The Nuggets became the fifth consecutive defending champion to fail to reach the conference finals. The last one to do it was Golden State in 2019 when the Warriors reached the NBA Finals only to lose to Toronto.
“The one thing I keep on going back to right now is I consider the San Antonio Spurs a dynasty and they never won back-to-back,” Malone said. “So losing, the hurt of it, the pain of it, it helped us win our first championship. Can we use this year?”
Murray thinks so.
“For sure,” he said. “It’s back to being the hunter.”
NEW YORK — — When the Indiana Pacers compiled one of the best offensive seasons in NBA history, they were just getting warmed up.
For Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, they delivered something really spectacular.
Tyrese Haliburton scored 26 points and the Pacers set an NBA playoff record by shooting 67.1% from the field, beating the New York Knicks 130-109 on Sunday to advance to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 10 years.
“We have a historic offense obviously, but this guy got things rolling and everybody kind of just followed suit,” center Myles Turner said, pointing toward Haliburton.
“To do that on the road here in the Garden in Game 7 obviously is phenomenal, but I think this is what we’ve been doing all season long and we were able to show it on the biggest stage.”
The Pacers averaged 123.3 points during the regular season, sixth highest in league history, and set an NBA record by scoring 140 11 times.
They haven’t slowed down much in the playoffs.
The Pacers made 29 of their 38 shots in the first half, a shooting percentage of 76.3% that was the highest in the postseason since 1997, when the NBA began keeping detailed play-by-play for all four quarters. They led 70-55 at that point and pulled away every time the Knicks tried to make a run in the second half.
“I just told our team when you win a Game 7 in Madison Square Garden, you’ve made history,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said.
The No. 6-seeded Pacers advanced to face top-seeded Boston in a series that begins Tuesday. Indiana last reached the conference finals in 2014, losing to Miami.
Jalen Brunson left in the second half with a broken left hand, one final injury for a Knicks team that was decimated by them.
They got OG Anunoby back Sunday after he missed the previous four games with a strained left hamstring, but he clearly wasn’t moving well and was taken out of the game after just five minutes.
Pascal Siakam and Andrew Nembhard each scored 20 points and Aaron Nesmith was 8 for 8 en route to his 19 for the Pacers.
Donte DiVincenzo made nine 3-pointers and scored 39 points for the Knicks, who were trying to reach the conference finals for the first time since 2000 but couldn’t overcome the losses of Julius Randle, Mitchell Robinson and Bojan Bogdanovic, before losing Anunoby and finally Brunson.
“Knowing that this team gave its best effort all year long, I can live with the result,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It’s disappointing, but in the end there’s only going to be one happy team. Twenty-nine teams will fall short. This team fought like crazy and there’s no regret.”
Brunson finished with 17 points and nine assists, shooting 6 for 17 after scoring 40 or more points five times in this postseason. Alec Burks came off the bench for 26 points.
The third Game 7 between the franchises — the Knicks won in the 1994 Eastern Conference finals and the Pacers pulled out a 97-95 victory the next year in the East semifinals — was a chance for the Pacers to prove that their fast-paced style can win at a time when defenses are supposed to rule.
They scored 39 points in the first quarter, the most in a Game 7 in the play-by-play era, a score that would have been more fitting for halftime in the Pacers-Knicks rivalry of the previous century.
“I think it’s just the old-school way of thinking that you can’t play this fast in the playoffs, but I think opportunistically you can do it. I think if we’re able to get stops, of course we can,” said Haliburton, who was wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of Reggie Miller making a choking sign from a playoff game at MSG.
The Pacers made 10 of their first 11 shots — it would have been 11 of 12, but Turner’s dunk attempt bounced back out of the basket — and didn’t slow down much the rest of the half. Knicks fans who were screaming and chanting before the game were groaning during it as the Pacers made shot after shot, no matter how well the Knicks had defended them.
The Pacers led 39-27 after shooting 16 for 21 from the field (76.2%) and 7 for 9 from 3-point range (77.8%) in the first quarter. Indiana then went 13 for 17 (76.5%) in the second quarter, with the lead growing to 22 points.
The Knicks cut it to 70-55 at halftime, then scored the first seven out of the break as part of a 12-3 start to the second half that trimmed it to 73-67. But with the Pacers leading by seven, the Knicks committed three straight turnovers that helped Indiana push the lead to 84-70.
Josh Hart played through an abdominal strain for the Knicks, fouling out with 10 points and eight rebounds.
