A record-breaking defensive performance from Victor Wembanyama was not enough to prevent the Minnesota Timberwolves taking a 1-0 lead against the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA’s Conference semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Wembanyama made 12 blocks – a record for the NBA play-offs – but Minnesota, sixth seed in the Western Conference, upset second seed San Antonio by claiming a 104-102 win on the road on Monday.<\/p>\n
The defensive player of the year added 11 points and 15 rebounds, becoming the third player to get a triple-double in the play-offs including blocks since the league began tracking blocks in 1973-74.<\/p>\n
Anthony Edwards returned from a knee injury for the Timberwolves and scored 18 points from the bench as they held on to win the opening game of the best-of-seven series.<\/p>\n
San Antonio remain at home for game two on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“We have to be better,” said Wembanyama. “We need to figure it out in the next 48 hours, and I’ve got no doubt that we will. I would trust us.”<\/p>\n
The New York Knicks made a commanding start to their series with the Philadelphia 76ers, winning 137-98 at home.<\/p>\n
The Knicks, who are the third seed in the Eastern Conference, became the first NBA team to win three straight play-off games by at least 25 points.<\/p>\n
Jalen Brunson scored 27 of his game-high 35 points in the first half while London-born forward OG Anunoby finished with 18.<\/p>\n
After beating the Atlanta Hawks 140-89 on Thursday, the Knicks became just the second team in NBA history to end one series and begin another with consecutive victories by at least 30 points.<\/p>\n
“Wasn’t any fun to be a part of, to be honest,” said 76ers coach Nick Nurse. “But it’s 0-1. Doesn’t really matter if it’s six points or 36 or whatever the hell it was.”<\/p>\n
Game two is scheduled for New York’s Madison Square Garden on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A record-breaking defensive performance from Victor Wembanyama was not enough to prevent the Minnesota Timberwolves taking a 1-0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-650848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650848","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=650848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}