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Improbable rally lifts Timberwolves past Nets

By Jerry Zgoda, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) –

NEW YORK – When the Timberwolves arrived at brand-new, $1 billion Barclays Center for the second NBA regular-season game ever played there, their bus rolled into a loading dock and entered an elevator that took them and their 40,000-pound vehicle down, down, down one level into the arena’s bowels.

Metaphorically, they spent the rest of the night trying to climb out of that hole during a remarkable 107-96 comeback victory over the Nets.

The Wolves got reserve point guard J.J. Barea back on the floor Monday after he left Sunday’s game in Toronto with a suspected concussion.

He passed every test Monday detailed by the NBA’s new concussion policy and helped lead a second-half comeback from 22 points behind early in the third quarter.

It’s the fourth-biggest comeback in franchise history. The Wolves overcame a 25-point deficit to beat the Charlotte Hornets in March 1996, and twice they came back from 24 down.

The Wolves trailed 71-49 with fewer than three minutes gone in the third quarter, then outscored the Nets 47-23 over the next 15 minutes and took a 96-94 lead with 4 minutes, 31 seconds remaining.

They did so with a makeshift lineup that mostly featured Barea and fellow reserves Chase Budinger, Dante Cunningham, Alexey Shved and either starter Nikola Pekovic or backup center Greg Stiemsma.

Pekovic led the Wolves with 21 points, Andrei Kirilenko added 16 points and 10 rebounds and Budinger scored 16, including a crucial late three-point shot, off the bench.

The Wolves chopped that 22-point deficit in half, at 86-75 by the end of the third quarter.

With both Barea and Shved pushing the ball from the backcourt, the Wolves then outscored Brooklyn 21-8 to start the fourth quarter and pushed themselves into the lead.

The Nets came back and tied the score twice, the last time at 96 with 4:12 left.

But the Wolves scored the next seven points and led by 103-96 with 38.9 seconds, an inexplicable turnaround that left the Nets’ newfound Brooklyn fans streaming for the exits while Budinger chest-bumped teammates after hitting a three-pointer that punctuated the comeback.

Shved, playing with a freshly shorn head of hair, started that telling 7-0 stretch with a running shot from the lane.

Pekovic added a shot in the lane after the Wolves played the kind of fourth-quarter defense they completely lacked in allowing Brooklyn to score 62 first-half points.

Then Budinger provided the dagger with that three-pointer.

The Wolves trailed by as many as 22 points in the third quarter on a night when for most of those three quarters they seemingly no had answer for Nets guards Deron Williams and Joe Johnson, or center Brook Lopez for that matter, either.

Williams dominated the first half, but the pair combined for only two points — by Johnson — in the final quarter.

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