Strus, Butler lead the Heat to No. 8 seed
Max Strus had another 3-pointer taken away in an elimination game. He and Jimmy Butler made sure it didn't matter.
The playoffs await. Strus and Butler — who was doubled over at times in the final moments, heaving for every breath — scored 31 points apiece, and the Miami Heat closed the game on a 15-1 run to beat the Chicago Bulls 102-91 in an Eastern Conference play-in game Friday night.
“Our team has obviously not been perfect this year,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “But I do know one thing about the men in that locker room: The last 48 hours, I know how categorically, unequivocally, how badly and desperately our group wanted to get into this damn thing — and get into the playoffs to have an opportunity to compete for a title.”
Their reward: the No. 8 seed in the East and a firstround 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 6 for 20, and Coby White scored 14. 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.
Tyler Herro added 12 points and Bam Adebayo grabbed 17 rebounds for Miami, which trailed by six midway through the final quarter.
But Butler scored while getting fouled with 2:17 left to put Miami ahead for good, found Strus for a 3-pointer — his seventh of the night — a minute later to push the lead to five, and Strus sealed it with three free throws after getting fouled on a try from beyond the arc with 40 seconds remaining.
“I don't think any of us felt any type of pressure,” Butler said. “We went out, we competed.”
TIMBERWOLVES 120, THUNDER 95 » Karl-Anthony Towns had 28 points and 11 rebounds to lead Minnesota into the playoffs, as the Timberwolves muscled and hustled their way past Oklahoma City to finish the playin tournament.
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 harderthan-it-had-to-be season.
Anthony Edwards had 19 points and 10 rebounds for the Wolves, who had a 5830 advantage in points in the paint. They will face No. 1 seed Denver in a best-ofseven series starting on Sunday night.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 22 points, going 12 for 12 from the free throw line but just 5 for 19 from the field. Jalen Williams and Lu Dort each scored 17 points.
With their best defender, Jaden McDaniels, out with a broken hand — thanks to a wall he punched out of frustration in the final regularseason game shortly before Gobert took a swing at Anderson in an argument during a timeout — the Timberwolves put Nickiel Alexander-Walker in the starting lineup to guard the dynamic Gilgeous-Alexander. They're cousins, actually.
Gilgeous-Alexander, 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 8-for-12 shooting in Minnesota's 108-102 overtime loss to the Lakers in the first playin game on Tuesday, but he camped out on the perimeter too much down the stretch as the Wolves offense 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.