LaMelo Ball and Ayo Dosunmu combined for 41 points and 12 assists, while Jonathan Kuminga came alive down the stretch as the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves topped the Houston Rockets 117-107 on Wednesday.
Ball scored 20 points and finished 4-for-7 on 3-pointers while Dosunmu added 21 points with six assists. Ball pushed the Timberwolves to a 104-98 lead after a 3-pointer, an assist on a Jaylen Clark 3 and a driving layup that came with 4:53 left to play.
Kuminga (16 points, eight rebounds, five assists) added a 3-pointer from the corner before his second-chance basket upped the lead to 111-104 with 1:51 remaining. Kuminga added another 3-pointer in front of the visiting bench with less than a minute left to play that served as the knockout blow.
The Timberwolves finished 15 of 35 from behind the arc.
Kevin Durant led the Rockets with 21 points. Alperen Sengun posted his 13th career triple-double with 17 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists. Fred VanVleet tallied 18 points for the Rockets, who finished with 18 turnovers that Minnesota converted into 33 points.
The game featured 15 ties and 26 lead changes.
The back-and-forth play began at the opening tip. Reed Sheppard nailed a 3-pointer, and the Rockets turned Minnesota’s ensuing turnover into a transition basket and a 25-23 lead at the 2:47 mark.
But Durant, who scored 10 points in the first, picked up his third foul with 15 seconds left in the frame, and the Timberwolves made a jumper and a layup to take a 33-30 lead into the second.
The Rockets shot 55% in the first period, including 6 of 10 from behind the arc. But the Timberwolves converted eight Houston turnovers into 10 points in the quarter. When Bones Hyland (19 points off the bench) continued his hot shooting in the second, his 3-pointer gave the Timberwolves a four-point lead.
The Rockets erased that deficit when Sheppard (14 points) sank a 3-pointer following a missed dunk by Kuminga that knotted the game at 44 at the 6:15 mark. That stalemate extended into the intermission, as two Amen Thompson free throws with less than a second on the clock yielded a 57-57 halftime score.
The teams combined for eight ties and 14 lead changes in the first half.
