The Minnesota Timberwolves won a double-overtime thriller against the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night, despite a career-high 61-point triple-double from Nikola Jokic.
Jokic’s 61 points set multiple records, including the highest-scoring triple-double in NBA history. He played a very long 52 minutes without taking a break after half-time, adding 10 rebounds and 10 assists to his stat line.
“Nikola came up to me after the third quarter and said, ‘Coach, I’m good. Leave me in there. I don’t want to come out. Let me just keep playing,'” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said post-game. “He was in a good rhythm, obviously – 61 points, 10 assists, 10 rebounds, 2 steals. The guy is Superman.”
Jokic himself added, “Coach asked me a couple times [if I wanted to come out] but I was feeling good.”
The Timberwolves sealed the victory when Nickeil Alexander-Walker sank two free throws with just 0.1 seconds remaining. It came after a crazy sequence in which Russell Westbrook stole the ball, missed a layup, and then fouled Alexander-Walker in the corner.
Malone defended Westbrook, adding: “He’s a guy that hates to lose. So he may not want to hear any of that stuff because he’s a perfectionist and he’s a competitor. And knowing the way I do, he’s probably going to put a lot of this on him. But we lost tonight. The Denver Nuggets, we as a collective group lost a game tonight, not one player.
🃏 NIKOLA JOKIĆ, A GAME FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS 🃏
🤯 61 PTS
🤯 10 REB
🤯 10 AST
🤯 6 3PM
🤯 2 STLAn all-time showing from an all-time player! pic.twitter.com/fdFyl2RyHU
— NBA (@NBA) April 2, 2025
“Obviously, I feel awful for Russ, that last play we get the turnover, we don’t convert, and then the foul. It was not from a lack of effort or care.
“Sometimes it goes like that, and that’s why we’ve just got to be strong. We’ve got to be resilient.”
One of the game’s biggest talking points was whether Denver should have slowed the play down instead of going for the layup.
Anthony Edwards paced Minnesota with 34 points, 10 rebounds, and 8 assists. Coming into the fourth quarter, he had just 10 points but came alive late on.
Jokic now joins Wilt Chamberlain (1967-68) as only the second player to have 91 games with a 60-point performance in NBA history; 7,117 instances of a player grabbing 20 rebounds in a game and 237 times a player has recorded 20 assists in a game.
Edwards was full of praise for his opponent, saying: “Nikola Jokic, he might be the best basketball player that I have ever seen close up, besides myself. He is incredible. The MVP race is tough. I don’t know. He had 60. That is crazy.”
