league<\/a> -leading eighth game this season with at least seven 3-pointers. This was also Ball’s 20th game with five-plus 3s.<\/p>\nCharlotte, which is 9-2 since mid-March and 39-22 since Thanksgiving Day, has not made the playoffs in 10 years. At this rate, the Hornets might even be able to skip the play-in games and secure a first round spot.<\/p>\n
The Timberwolves (46-32) have yet to do so, having lost four of five games since ace defender and third-leading scorer Jaden McDaniels was sidelined by a left knee injury. They also played without star Anthony Edwards for the eighth time in their last 10 games due to lingering pain in his right knee. <\/p>\n
Coach Chris Finch said before the game he doesn’t believe \u201cthere’s any great concern for anything longer-term,\u201d but Edwards’ status remains uncertain.<\/p>\n
Julius Randle led the Timberwolves with 26 points, and Bones Hyland provided their biggest boost off the bench with 18 points, six rebounds and six assists.<\/p>\n
Minnesota is in sixth place in the Western Conference, three games ahead of Phoenix (43-35) above the play-in cut with four games to play.<\/p>\n
Hyland hit a 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer that gave the Timberwolves a 60-55 lead, but Bridges and the Hornets burst out in the third quarter and were up by 10 by the end of that period.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Hornets: Visit Boston on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Timberwolves: Visit Indiana on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MINNEAPOLIS (AP) \u2014 LaMelo Ball scored 35 points and Miles Bridges added 25 points, eight rebounds and seven…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[7,684,473,3878,685,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-700849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-charlotte-hornets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-charlotte","10":"tag-charlotte-hornets","11":"tag-charlottehornets","12":"tag-hornets","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116356000408746967","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}