Heat defeat Bulls in play-in tournament, will face Bucks in 1st round
Timberwolves set to face Nuggets after beating Thunder to finish tournament
Max Strus and Jimmy Butler scored 31 points apiece, and the Miami Heat got into the playoffs by rallying in the final minutes to beat the visiting Chicago Bulls 102-91 in an Eastern Conference play-in game Friday night.
Tyler Herro added 12 points and Bam Adebayo grabbed 17 rebounds for Miami, which trailed by six midway through the final quarter.
The win gives Miami the No. 8 seed in the East, and a first-round matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks, the NBA's top overall seed, starting Sunday.
DeMar DeRozan led the Bulls with 26 points and nine assists. Alex Caruso added 16 points, Zach Lavine had 15 but shot just six for 20, and Coby White scored 14 for the Bulls. Chicago got a road win at Toronto on Wednesday to extend its season, but couldn't get the second road victory it needed to make the playoffs.
The Heat led by 14 in the first quarter, held as much as a 10-point lead in the third quarter, then found themselves down by six with 7:12 remaining.
Maybe it prepared them for this moment. White made a three-pointer with 3:47 left to put the Bulls up 90-87.
The score the rest of the way: Heat 15, Bulls 1.
Towns leads Timberwolves past Thunder
Karl-Anthony Towns had 28 points and 11 rebounds to lead Minnesota into the playoffs, as the Timberwolves muscled and hustled their way past the Oklahoma City Thunder 120-95 to finish the play-in tournament on Friday night.
Rudy Gobert had 21 points and 10 rebounds in his return from exile for swinging at teammate Kyle Anderson, and the Wolves filled out the NBA playoff bracket by seizing the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference with a near-perfect performance at the end of another harder-than-it-had-to-be season.
Anthony Edwards had 19 points and 10 rebounds for the Wolves, who had a 58-30 advantage in points in the paint. They will face No. 1 seed Denver in a best-of-seven series starting on Sunday night.
With their best defender Jaden McDaniels out with a broken hand — thanks to a wall he punched out of frustration in the final regular-season game shortly before Gobert took a swing at Anderson in an argument during a timeout — the Timberwolves put Toronto's Nickeil Alexander-Walker in the starting lineup to guard the dynamic Gilgeous-Alexander. They're cousins, actually.
Gilgeous-Alexander was slow to get going in the Thunder's play-in tournament opener, too, before scoring 25 of his 32 points after halftime in the 113-108 win over New Orleans. This time, the NBA's fourth-leading scorer picked up his fourth foul early in the third quarter and then had to leave for treatment a few minutes later after Gobert accidentally elbowed him in the eye as he rebounded and dunked his own miss.
Towns had 24 points on eight-for-12 shooting in Minnesota's 108-102 overtime loss in Los Angeles in the first play-in game on Tuesday, but he camped out on the perimeter too much down the stretch as the Wolves offence grinded to a woeful finish.
This time, the Wolves took a much better blend of outside and inside shots with a constantly moving ball. They leaned hard on their advantage around the basket, with the big men Towns and Gobert going to work against the smaller Thunder.
