Ayo Dosunmu came off the bench to score a career-high 43 points on 13-for-17 shooting, and the short-handed Minnesota Timberwolves pulled away for a 112-96 win over the Denver Nuggets in Game 4 of their Western Conference quarterfinals series on Saturday night in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
The victory, which gave Minnesota a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series, came at a cost to the Timberwolves, who lost two starters due to injury.<\/p>\n
Anthony Edwards, a four-time All-Star and the team\u2019s top scorer, left in the second quarter and did not return because of a left knee injury. Earlier in the first half, Timberwolves guard Donte DiVincenzo injured his right leg on a non-contact play. Early reports indicated he might have ruptured his Achilles tendon.<\/p>\n
Naz Reid added 17 points off the bench for Minnesota. Julius Randle finished with 15 points and nine rebounds, and Rudy Gobert grabbed a game-high-tying 15 rebounds to go along with four points.<\/p>\n
Jamal Murray scored 30 points on 10-for-25 shooting to lead Denver. Nikola Jokic finished with 24 points, 15 rebounds and nine assists. However, he shot 8-for-22 from the field and missed all three of his 3-point attempts.<\/p>\n
Thunder 121, Suns 109<\/p>\n
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored a playoff-career-high 42 points to lift Oklahoma City to a road win over Phoenix.<\/p>\n
The reigning NBA Most Valuable Player finished 15 of 18 from the floor with eight assists to give the Thunder a commanding 3-0 lead in their first-round Western Conference playoff series. Oklahoma City has won 11 consecutive first-round games. Playing without Jalen Williams, who suffered a hamstring strain in Wednesday\u2019s Game 2 victory, the Thunder leaned even more heavily on Gilgeous-Alexander.<\/p>\n
Dillon Brooks led the Suns with 33 points while Jalen Green added 26 points. Devin Booker scored 16 points, but was held to 6-of-16 shooting from the floor.<\/p>\n
Knicks 114, Hawks 98<\/p>\n
Karl Anthony-Towns totaled 20 points, 10 assists and 10 rebounds for his first career playoff triple-double as New York earned a victory over host Atlanta and evened their Eastern Conference first-round series at two games apiece.<\/p>\n
Towns ensured Game 5 on Tuesday in New York will not be an elimination game for the Knicks and also ensured the series returns to Atlanta for Game 6 on Thursday. Towns posted his fifth career triple-double in any game. He also notched the seventh postseason triple-double in New York\u2019s history. Anunoby led the Knicks with 22 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth career playoff double-double.<\/p>\n
CJ McCollum led the Hawks with 17 points but was held to three points after halftime. Nickell Alexander-Walker added 15 and hit five 3s, but the Hawks were a dreadful 10 of 41 (24.4%) from behind the arc.<\/p>\n
Magic 113, Pistons 105<\/p>\n
Paolo Banchero and Desmond Bane scored 25 points apiece as Orlando withstood a fourth-quarter rally to beat visiting Detroit in Game 3 of their first-round Eastern Conference playoff series.<\/p>\n
Banchero had 12 rebounds and nine assists for the eighth-seeded Magic, who improved to 7-1 in their last eight home postseason games, including play-in tournament games. Bane was 7-for-9 from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
Cunningham scored 12 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter for the Pistons. Tobias Harris scored 23 points, Ausar Thompson had 17 and Duncan Robinson added 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayo Dosunmu came off the bench to score a career-high 43 points on 13-for-17 shooting, and the short-handed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-631543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}