The Timberwolves’ winning streak ended at eight games Monday night at Target Center with a 132-130 overtime loss to depleted Indiana.
Timberwolves fall to Pacers 132-130 in overtime, ending eight-game winning streak
The Wolves lost for the first time in March to an Indiana team playing without starters Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, Myles Turner and Aaron Nesmith.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
March 18, 2025 at 5:42AM
The same team that hadn’t lost since Feb. 28 finally succumbed to the Pacers and forward Obi Toppin, who made seven three-pointers, including the winner with 3.5 seconds left.
Toppin scored 34 points and was 7-for-10 on threes — including four made in the final three minutes of OT — while Wolves All-Star Anthony Edwards scored 38 points but was 1-for-11 on his threes.
The loss came after the Wolves won their eighth straight game Sunday night, dispatching visiting Utah. It also came without starting center Rudy Gobert down the stretch after he and Indiana’s Andrew Nembhard were ejected after a third-quarter exchange. Following a video review, Gobert was assessed a flagrant foul-2 and Nembhard was given his second technical foul of the game.
In Monday’s second game of a back-to-back set, the Wolves (40-30) trailed an opponent missing four starters by 15 points in the second quarter. They then led by eight early in the fourth quarter, by two with 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter and by five points with 66 seconds left in OT.
But they couldn’t put the game away against the Pacers (38-29), who now have won three of four.
“They just played harder,” Wolves guard Donte DiVincenzo said. “They had a lot of guys out, and they came out and competed. They had a chip on their shoulder, and we didn’t. We started playing when we were down (15 points). That’s no excuse.”
Indiana’s T.J. McConnell made a driving layup to tie the score at 117 with 4.6 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and Edwards’ fadeaway three missed at the buzzer. In overtime, Toppin made his final three with 3.5 seconds left and Wolves forward Julius Randle’s turnaround, 12-foot shot missed in the final second.
“It’s a shot I made previously in the game, I make it all the time,” Randle said. “It was just short.”
The Wolves’ eight consecutive victories represented the longest active winning streak in the NBA. It was three shy of a franchise-record 11, won between mid-January and mid-February in 2001. It also was their longest since nine won in a row in March and April 2004, the season in which Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell reached the Western Conference finals and Garnett won league MVP.
The Wolves arrived at Target Center on Monday with that eight-game winning streak, looking for No. 9 against an injured Pacers team missing four starters and its biggest stars: Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, Myles Turner and Aaron Nesmith.
Only starting shooting guard Nembhard remained standing, but he started and played out of position at point guard to fill Haliburton’s absence.
The Wolves hadn’t lost a game since doing so Feb. 28 at Utah, when they lost without the suspended Edwards and injured Gobert and Randle.
Gobert didn’t see Monday’s finish after he was ejected along with Nembhard early in the third quarter. Gobert received a flagrant foul-2 for using an arm block after Nembhard had done something similar to Wolves point guard Mike Conley on a drive to the basket.
“We walked into the game, a back-to-back, we’ve done that before,” Conley said. “We have to be prepared for games like this. These [Indiana] guys are really good players. They don’t always get the opportunity they did tonight, but they all can play and you have to respect that.
“When you don’t respect the game, that’s when guys like that get confident. They get good looks and they play regardless [of] who they’re playing against. They beat us and did all the things they needed to do.”
Wolves coach Chris Finch lamented what he called his team’s lack of purpose to start the game and a team, including Edwards, that played without control with the game on the line.
“At the time we had the chance to take control of the game, it was wild,” Finch said. “A series of contested threes, deep-bomb threes. Just playing too fast, almost out of control. There’s just no need for that. There’s a lot of ways to close out a game. It’s not just making game-winning shots. That’s what we’ve not been able to do all season long. In that moment, we have to have composure and the ability to take control of the game, and we didn’t.”
The Wolves lost for the first time in March to an Indiana team playing without starters Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam, Myles Turner and Aaron Nesmith.
