It is a shame Russell Westbrook must be the first player mentioned in a blog about a 140-139 Minnesota victory over Denver that went to double-overtime and was perhaps the single most entertaining game of the season. That is what must happen, however, when such a game ends with one guy delivering the worst 17-second sequence of individual basketball anyone can imagine.

So let’s just start at the end: With 17.7 seconds left in the second overtime, the Timberwolves were preparing to inbound the ball while trailing 139-138. Anthony Edwards got the ball in the corner, and after being double-teamed made a hesitant pass that found nobody. Westbrook jumped on the loose ball and initiated a 2-on-1 fast break going the other way. He passed the ball to Christian Braun, who passed it back to Westbrook, who then completely duffed a wide-open layup. The Timberwolves grabbed the rebound with 10 seconds left, and after a wild scramble the ball found Nickeil Alexander-Walker in the corner. Alexander-Walker’s shot banged off the side of the rim as the buzzer sounded, but not before Westbrook, flying back into the play to contest the shot, fouled him. The refs put 0.1 seconds on the clock, Alexander-Walker went to the line for three shots, sank two, and the game was over.

Those mistakes, committed in such close proximity, made not only for a fitting end to Westbrook’s performance in this game—12 points on 4-of-11 shooting with five turnovers—but a grim reminder of where the late-stage Russell Westbrook Experience tends to lead. Talk to a Clippers fan about last year’s postseason and they will flinch at the memory of Westbrook losing his mind and shooting the Clippers out of their first-round series; ask a Nuggets fan what their biggest fear in life is and they will describe something pretty close to what happened last night. Westbrook has been a mostly positive force for the Nuggets this season, but that fear never goes away, and for good reason.

Everything that preceded those final 17 seconds can reasonably be described as the best game of the year. Nikola Jokic, who played 53 minutes, including every second of the second half and both overtimes, finished with a 61-10-10, the highest-scoring triple-double in NBA history. Anthony Edwards was 3-of-11 from the field with 10 points through the first three quarters, and then scored 24 on 9-of-14 shooting the rest of the way. Rudy Gobert tried his best.

This was a game defined by the sort of effort and shot-making rarely seen in early April. The Nuggets came into it having lost five straight to the Timberwolves, most of them in humiliating fashion, and were challenged by their own head coach to treat it like a rivalry game. Their urgency was met by a Timberwolves team that is still trying to escape the meat grinder that is the Western Conference standings—even after last night’s win they are still in seventh place, but only a half-game back of the fifth seed. It’s crazy to think that a team capable of winning a game like this one might still need to fight its way out of the play-in tournament, but that’s life in a playoff race that Luka Doncic, Jimmy Butler, and a healthy Kawhi Leonard have all recently parachuted into.

There is a good chance that these two teams will be thrown into a first-round playoff matchup, which at this point is a thrilling prospect for both neutrals and Timberwolves fans. Speaking on behalf of the remaining side: Please throw me off a cliff.