MINNEAPOLIS _ The Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets played 82 games to settle a playoff score Wednesday night at Target Center and then played five minutes more before the Timberwolves prevailed, 112-106, in overtime to earn their first playoff appearance in 14 years.
By doing so, they also won their 47th game on the season's final night, 16 more victories than last season's 31.
The teams reprised an overtime game played in December and this time the Wolves outlasted the Nuggets again after monumental big-man performances by young Wolves star Karl-Anthony Towns and Denver's Nikola Jokic.
Jokic won the matchup with a 35-point, 10-rebound performance, but Towns and the Wolves won the game Towns delivered a 26-point, 14-rebound game and four-time All-Star Jimmy Butler scored 29 points in just his third game back from knee surgery.
Jeff Teague's short floater put the Wolves ahead to stay, 107-106 with 1:18 left and then the Wolves defense stiffened once again, setting up Butler to make one of two free throws for a two-point lead with 40.3 seconds left.
When Denver guard Will Barton missed a short shot, the Nuggets were forced to foul and Andrew Wiggins made both free throws with 14.6 seconds left that made it a two-possession from which the Nuggets never recovered.
Butler made two more with nine seconds left just for good measure.
Afterward, Butler praised his team and his teammates for playing hard, guarding at game's end and also credited longtime teammate Taj Gibson for a crucial steal on Jokic that helped force overtime and two clutch free throws by Andrew Wiggins in the game's final seconds.
The Wolves will open the playoffs this weekend.
"We brought the city back to where it needs to be," Butler said afterward. "We believed in ourselves. We've got some guys who want to win."
Wednesday's game was the third time since the current NBA playoff format arrived in 1984 _ and the first time since 1997 _ that two teams played on the regular season's final day with the winner advancing to the playoffs and the loser eliminated.
Wednesday's game drew Target Center's 16th sellout of the season, an audience of 18,978 fans that gave the Wolves their most sellouts since the franchise's infancy, back in the 1991-92 season.
The Wolves hadn't reached the playoffs since Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell led the Wolves to the 2004 Western Conference finals.
In those 14 years between, the Wolves drafted Rashad McCants, Randy Foye, Corey Brewer, Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio, Jonny Flynn, Derrick Williams, Zach LaVine and Shabazz Muhammad, among others, with first-round draft picks and none of them ever reached the playoffs with the Timberwolves.
Wiggins was acquired in a 2014 summertime trade for Love and never sniffed the playoffs in his first three seasons.
"It has been a long time," Wiggins said before the game. "I've been here my whole career now. So it's about time we do something."
He was asked if he'd consider the season a failure if the Wolves didn't reach the playoffs.
"Basically, you know," he said. "(Then) everything we did was for nothing."
In overtime, Butler scored the first points on a banked shot from the right side, but Barton put his team ahead for the first time in a long time with a 3-point shot that gave Denver a 104-103 lead with 3:08 left.
The Nuggets still led 106-105 left when Teague _ one of five veterans Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau either traded for or signed last summer for a game just like this one _ made a short floating shot put the Wolves ahead 107-106 just before the 24-second shot clock expired with 1:18 left.
The Nuggets had won their last six games to reach Wednesday's finale with a chance still to make the playoffs.
They did so after coming from behind by nine points to beat Portland on Monday and earlier this month came back from 19 behind to beat Milwaukee.
On Wednesday, they trailed by eight points with fewer than five minutes and then scored eight consecutive points in a comeback tied the score at 101 with Nuggets second-year guard Jamal Murray made a tough banked shot with 1:41 left.
Neither team scored the rest of the fourth quarter, the game going to overtime after Gibson stripped the ball from Jokic with 1.6 seconds left.
That gave the Wolves a chance to win the game in regulation, but they could do no better in those 1.6 seconds after a timeout than Jamal Crawford's long 3-point heave that missed at the buzzer.
