Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic is slow to get up after a play against the Oklahoma City Thunder during the first half of Game 1 of an NBA basketball second-round playoff series on Tuesday in Oklahoma City. (AP photo)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Timberwolves have been the surprise hit of the NBA playoffs, winning their first six games behind a dominant defense, clutch performances from superstar Anthony Edwards and enviable depth to fuel a relentless approach.

They did the hard part by taking the first two games of their Western Conference semifinal series in Denver from the defending champion Nuggets in commanding fashion. Now they get to take the court in front of their own crowd. Game 3 is on Friday night, a late tipoff that will only intensify the atmosphere inside the success-deprived arena.

“The fans have been great all year,” Karl-Anthony Towns said after practice on Thursday. “I’ve said it before: They have this place jumping like Prince is back.”

Having completed their first-round sweep of Phoenix with two wins on the road, the Timberwolves have not played at Target Center since April 23, a span of 17 days between home games. The team has partnered with 11 downtown bars to host watch parties. Ticket prices on the secondary market were starting in the $250 range for single seats near the rafters, as of Thursday afternoon.

Just about the buzz to be expected around a franchise that has not only never won an NBA title, but advanced past the first round only once in the 34 seasons prior to this.

“The city is on fire. People are super excited about this team,” coach Chris Finch said. “It’s a team that’s easy to root for because of the way they play. They play hard. They share the ball. I think we have a lot of good guys who play with a lot of personality.”

In the history of the NBA playoffs, including the Nuggets, 30 teams have lost the first two games at home in a best-of-seven series, according to Sportradar research. Only five of them came back to win, with the Los Angeles Clippers the most recent in a 2021 first-round rally past Dallas.

The Nuggets are confident they can be the sixth. But they’ll have to find a way to start fast, minimize the crowd noise and avoid the uncharacteristic frustration they wore throughout their 106-80 loss in Game 2. Point guard Jamal Murray, who has just 25 points in the series on 9-for-32 shooting, was fined $100,000 for throwing a heat pack onto the court.

“Even if we do lose the first quarter,” Murray said, “just the intent, the energy, the focus to get it done I think is big.”

The New York Knicks won’t be as desperate when they take the floor in Indianapolis for Game 3 earlier in the evening. They’ve got a 2-0 lead on the Pacers, who, if they weren’t as flustered in Game 2 as the Nuggets were on their home floor, are carrying some discouragement of their own. Coach Rick Carlisle voiced their displeasure with the officiating after the 130-121 loss in New York.

“They smashed us on the boards again,” guard T.J. McConnell said, “and brought more energy than we did so we have to fix that.”

———————–

KNICKS AT PACERS

New York leads 2-0. Game 3, 7 p.m. EDT, ESPN

• NEED TO KNOW: Carlisle doesn’t complain often about officiating, but after two physical games in New York he felt his team got the short end of the whistles and publicly called out the refs. The Pacers backed him by sending 78 plays to the league office for review, and now all eyes will be on the foul totals when the series shifts to Indiana’s home court.

• KEEP AN EYE ON: Rebounding. Even before this Eastern Conference semifinal series started, Carlisle said repeatedly his team needed to match New York’s ruggedness around the rim. But in the second halves of the first two games, the Pacers frequently failed to finish defensive stops because they couldn’t come up with key rebounds. The Knicks have an 84-66 edge on the glass in the series.

• INJURY WATCH: Knicks All-Star guard Jalen Brunson, who missed the final 15 minutes of the first half in Game 2 with a right foot injury, returned for the second half to play through the discomfort. He’s listed as questionable. The Knicks have ruled out forward OG Anunoby with an injured left hamstring, thinning a rotation that’s already shortened by the absence of Julius Randle, Bojan Bogdanovic and Mitchell Robinson. The Pacers listed All-Star Tyrese Haliburton as questionable with lower back spasms.

• PRESSURE IS ON: Carlisle. The Pacers’ first-round triumph over Milwaukee required wins in all three of their home games and gave Carlisle a playoff series victory for the first time since he led the Mavericks to the 2011 NBA championship.

———————–

NUGGETS AT TIMBERWOLVES

Minnesota leads 2-0. Game 3, 9:30 p.m. EDT, ESPN

• NEED TO KNOW: After recording the franchise’s first four-game series sweep in the first round against the Suns, the Timberwolves are halfway to another one. They’ll get four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert back, too, after he missed Game 2 for the birth of his son.

• KEEP AN EYE ON: Edwards and Towns. The All-Star duo has five playoff games with 25-plus points apiece, a franchise record.

• INJURY WATCH: Murray has been playing through a strained left calf. He’s listed as questionable for Game 3 for the Nuggets, along with guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (bruised right abdomen) and backup Reggie Jackson (bruised left calf).

• PRESSURE IS ON: Nikola Jokic. The announcement of his third NBA MVP award came at an awkward time with the Nuggets reeling from their Game 2 meltdown. The Serbian superstar had only 16 points on 5-for-13 shooting in Game 2.

——————

Nikola Jokic wins 3rd NBA MVP in last 4 years

——————

(AP) — Nikola Jokic did it all again. And the MVP trophy is his again.

Jokic, the Denver Nuggets star from Serbia, was announced Wednesday night as the NBA’s Most Valuable Player — his third time winning the award in the past four seasons, a feat that just six other players in league history have accomplished.

He averaged 26.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and 9.0 assists. Others averaged more in each category — and Jokic has had better years in each of those categories — but he was the only player to rank in the NBA’s top 10 in points, rebounds and assists per game this season.

Jokic got 79 of a possible 99 first-place votes from the panel of reporters and broadcasters who cast ballots on awards when the regular season ended.

“It’s got to start with your teammates,” Jokic said on TNT, where the award was announced. “Without them, I’m nothing. Without them, I cannot do nothing. Coaches, players, organization, medical staff, development coaches … I cannot be whoever I am without them.”

It likely was not a coincidence that Jokic appeared on television for the award announcement wearing a T-shirt commemorating the life of one of his mentors, Golden State assistant coach Dejan Milojević, who died earlier this year after a heart attack on a road trip.

Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was second and Dallas’ Luka Doncic was third, both getting into the top three of MVP voting for the first time. With Jokic from Serbia, Gilgeous-Alexander from Canada and Doncic from Slovenia, it marked the third consecutive season that three players born outside the U.S. finished 1-2-3 in the MVP balloting.

This time, the foreign dominance atop the NBA was even more pronounced: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is from Greece, was fourth — so this became the first time in the award’s 69-year history that international players went 1-2-3-4 in the voting. It also became the sixth consecutive year that a player born outside the U.S. won the award.

Jokic appeared on all 99 ballots, with 18 second-place votes and two third-place votes. Gilgeous-Alexander also appeared on every ballot, with 15 first-place votes, 40 second-place, 40 third-place, three fourth-place and one fifth-place nod.

Doncic was on all but one ballot and got four first-place votes. Antetokounmpo got one first-place vote on his way to fourth. New York’s Jalen Brunson was fifth, followed by Boston’s Jayson Tatum, Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis and Phoenix’s Kevin Durant.

“Some people say it’s the best player on the best team,” Jokic said, when asked to define an MVP. “To me, it’s the guy who’s the most valuable, the team couldn’t play without him.”

Jokic is now the ninth player to win the MVP award at least three times. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won it six times, Bill Russell and Michael Jordan each won five, Wilt Chamberlain and LeBron James won four, and Moses Malone, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are the other three-time winners.

Jokic’s surprise rise to superstardom has been chronicled time and again over the years: He was the 41st overall pick in the 2014 draft, didn’t even think he had a realistic chance at playing in the NBA when his career was beginning and now has a Hall of Fame resume at 29.

The other players with three MVP trophies in a four-year span are James, Johnson, Bird, Abdul-Jabbar, Chamberlain and Russell. And Jokic becomes the fifth player to be first or second in the MVP voting in four consecutive years — joining Bird, Abdul-Jabbar, Russell and Tim Duncan.

Gilgeous-Alexander had perhaps the best feel-good story in the NBA this season, helping Oklahoma City to the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference by averaging 30.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and 6.2 assists. The Thunder won 57 games, 17 more than they did last season and 33 more than they did two years ago, their rise coinciding with Gilgeous-Alexander’s emergence as one of the game’s elite players.

“There is not a night when I don’t feel like we have the best player on the floor. … There’s no one I’d rather have on our team than him,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, the league’s coach of the year this season, said last month.

Doncic made a case for the MVP award by posting the first season in NBA history in which a player averaged 33 points, nine rebounds and nine assists per game. There had been 14 instances before this year in which a player averaged that many points and rebounds in a season — of those, five had resulted in MVP wins, including last season when Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid averaged 33 points and 10 rebounds.

And this was the second time ever that a player averaged at least 33 points and nine assists per game. The other was in 1972-73, when Kansas City’s Tiny Archibald averaged 34 points and 11 assists. He finished third in that season’s MVP voting, just like Doncic this season.

But in the end, it was Jokic who stood above all others — and the vote wasn’t close.

“I think he’s stated his case pretty well,” Nuggets guard Jamal Murray said. “He does it every night. It’s hard to do what he does and face the kind of pressure that he does each and every game. He does it with a smile on his face. He makes everybody around us better. And he’s a leader on the court and somebody that we expect greatness from every time he steps on the court and he’s delivered.”

___

This story has been corrected to Doncic averaging 33 points, not 34.

___

AP Sports Writers Arnie Stapleton and Pat Graham in Denver contributed to this report.

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA