Timberwolves clinch top‑6 seed
The Minnesota Timberwolves secured a Western Conference top‑6 seed as the playoff race tightened late in the regular season, improving their seeding and likely avoiding early play‑in pressure. (x.com)
Minnesota got what every team wants in the season’s last week: certainty. The Timberwolves locked up a top-six spot in the Western Conference on April 8, which means they can no longer fall into the National Basketball Association play-in tournament that starts on April 14. (nba.com) That top-six line is the cliff edge in the National Basketball Association standings. Teams that finish seventh through tenth have to survive the play-in just to reach the real first round, while teams first through sixth go straight into the playoffs that begin on April 18. (nba.com) Minnesota clinched it with a 124-104 win over the Indiana Pacers on April 7. Ayo Dosunmu scored 24 points, and Julius Randle and Bones Hyland added 19 each in the game that pushed the Timberwolves over the line. (cbsnews.com) By April 9, the Timberwolves were 46-30 and sitting sixth in the West. The Phoenix Suns were seventh at 42-35, which left too little runway for Phoenix to catch Minnesota with only a few regular-season games left. (basketball-reference.com) The squeeze in the middle of the West is why this mattered. Minnesota was chasing the Denver Nuggets at 49-28 and the Houston Rockets at 47-29, so the team was still climbing for position while also trying not to slide into the play-in trapdoor. (basketball-reference.com) This is a different kind of finish than last spring. Instead of entering April with room to coast, Minnesota spent the final stretch in a traffic jam where one bad week could have turned a playoff berth into a sudden-death mini-tournament. (nba.com, basketball-reference.com) The next question is seeding, not survival. If Minnesota stays sixth, it opens against the third seed; if it climbs to fifth or fourth, the matchup changes, but the bigger win is avoiding two extra elimination-style games before the bracket even starts. (nba.com) The calendar is tight from here. The regular season runs through April 12, the play-in tournament starts April 14, and the Timberwolves now get to spend those days preparing for one opponent instead of waiting to see whether they even make the field. (nba.com, espn.com)
