DENVER — The Wolves were lying flat on the mat early in the third quarter of Game 7 on Sunday.

A Jamal Murray corner triple put the Nuggets up 20.

If the script followed that of the first six games of the series, the Nuggets were on to the Western Conference finals. When someone landed a haymaker between these two teams, the opponent didn’t punch back.

But Minnesota decided not to throw in the towel. Instead, the Wolves got themselves off the mat and fought — and they won, rallying for a 98-90 Game 7 victory.

Minnesota closed the third quarter on a 28-9 run to trim the deficit to one heading to the fourth, and the Wolves imposed their will over the final frame to extend their season and advance to the Western Conference finals against the Dallas Mavericks.

Game 1 against Dallas is set for Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. CDT at Target Center.

To be the champs, you have to beat the champs — and the Wolves just did the latter in emphatic fashion.

It’s the first time Minnesota has reached this round since 2004, when the Wolves also survived a thrilling Game 7, bouncing the Sacramento Kings at Target Center. On that night, it was Kevin Garnett almost solely powering Minnesota to unchartered territory with perhaps the greatest individual performance in Timberwolves history.

Sunday was not that — Sunday was a story of the collective.

Anthony Edwards was far from elite on Sunday. The Nuggets paid him loads of defensive attention, and the 22-year-old rarely found the bottom of the net.

But Karl-Anthony Towns had an awesome game on both ends, making life difficult for Nikola Jokic while playing efficient, aggressive offense. He finished with 23 points and 11 rebounds, including the game-sealing putback in the closing minute.

Jaden McDaniels put together his second straight strong offensive performance, tallying 23 points on the strength of three made triples.

Naz Reid carried Minnesota home in the fourth. With the Wolves leading by three, on back to back possessions Reid put back misses, including an emphatic slam off another Edwards miss. Then, in transition, Reid made the right play on the run, kicking to Edwards, who finally cashed an open triple to put Minnesota up 10 with three minutes to play.

Game, set, series.

“KAT got his fifth foul, Naz came in, he played great defense on (Nikola) Jokic, got a couple offensive rebounds, hit a big shot, made a big dunk, got a couple of steals,” Edwards said. “He played hard, man. So he’s super important to our team, and we tell him all the time, ‘Stay with it, just stay with it.’ And he stayed with it tonight and it showed, for sure.”

It took everyone for Minnesota to dig itself out of such a large hole Sunday evening. The Nuggets dominated play in all facets over the first 26 minutes. They were on point defensively, and they dominated the glass.

The Timberwolves had 18 rebounds at the half — Jokic had 15.

The entire script was flipped in the second half. Denver missed a few open shots, and many of its players suddenly were rattled. The champs were backed into a corner and flinched.

And Minnesota pounced. The Wolves dug in defensively, forcing turnovers that led to fastbreak runouts that led to dicing the deficit in a rapid manner.

Denver couldn’t survive the onslaught.

Even postgame, Edwards couldn’t believe it — “We was down 20 points,” he noted in a state of shock.

“That wasn’t Timberwolves basketball,” Towns said of the first 26 minutes. “That was park basketball.”

The last 22 minutes encapsulated what made this team so good all season.

“I really think guys just found whatever that little bit was for each individual to do a little bit better,” Mike Conley said. “Each guy did something.”

The three-time MVP was trying to fend off a pack of hungry Wolves on his own, as Murray — who scored 24 first-half points, only to then go cold when it mattered most — and Michael Porter Jr. failed to hit shots.

Down the stretch, Jokic would stand with the ball and no one would move, no one would cut, no one would come to the ball. They didn’t want to. Jokic finished with 34 points, 19 rebounds and seven assists. He finished with 14 points in the fourth quarter. No one else on his team tallied more than six.

Meanwhile, six separate Wolves players scored in the frame. And three players — McDaniels, Rudy Gobert and Reid, all had seven-plus points in the decisive frame.

“That’s the team we can be and the team we want to be. Obviously Ant and KAT bring so much attention when they make the right play,” Gobert said. “When they know everybody else is gonna be able to score and then it’s really tough on the defense and tonight, and the last game, he did an amazing job doing that. And I think our team is, we’re still getting better every single game, every single day. It’s fun to be a part of.”

Minnesota has caused many opponents all season to shrivel into the corner. That the Nuggets did so on their home floor after holding such a stunning advantage, though, is Minnesota’s grandest achievement to date.

“That was tops,” Wolves assistant coach Elston Turner said of the defensive performance in the second half. “We’ve had some good ones, but it was tops because it was against the defending champs — *that* team. They’re a good execution team, they play well together, they’ve got experience. Everything is in their favor. To stop them (means something).”

It was a snapshot of who the Wolves have been all season, and is why the Wolves are now eight wins away from an NBA title.

“I’m so proud with the way we kept our composure tonight,” Gobert said. “The way we kept trusting each other tonight. It’s a credit to every single guy in this locker room, every single guy on this coaching staff. We’re only halfway there.”

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Dolores Rosedale, a model known as Roxanne whose burst of fame in the early 1950s as the hostess of the wacky game show “Beat the Clock” led to the creation of a doll in her image and to appearances on the covers of magazines such as Life and TV Guide, died May 2 in Spring Park, Minnesota. She was 95.

Her daughter Ann Roddy confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility.

Roxanne joined “Beat the Clock” in 1950 when it made its transition to television from radio. Bud Collyer, the host, presided over the weekly program, in which contestants raced to finish stunts against time limits.

Roxanne’s role didn’t require her to say much at first. She posed with the prizes and took pictures of contestants as they carried out their stunts. She later gave introductions of the contestants.

But her poise and glamour — and, perhaps, the polka-dot ballet costume she sometimes wore — helped her break out.

In 1951, she donned a costume for a Life magazine cover story about chorus girls. Inside, a photograph that identified her as the show’s “stunt mistress” showed her guiding a blindfolded Boy Scout as he tried to identify an elephant.

She was on at least two Look magazine covers, one of which showed her posing on Jones Beach, on Long Island, New York; two TV Guide covers, including one with Collyer; and one cover of Tempo, a celebrity magazine, with the headline “Secrets of Roxanne — TV Sensation.”

Commenting on her popularity, The Bangor Daily News in Maine declared that she was “batting 1.000 in the pinup league.”

She reached a pop-culture pinnacle of sorts in 1952 with the appearance of the 18-inch Roxanne doll. It was made of “lifelike latex with vinyl head, sleeping eyes and washable ‘platinum’ Saran hair,” according to a newspaper ad for the Abraham & Straus department store in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.

“Have your picture taken with TV’s beauteous blonde!” the ad said, promoting Roxanne’s appearance with the doll at A&S Toyland in November 1952. A tiny camera hung around the doll’s neck.

An ad from Valentine, the doll’s manufacturer, published in a business trade magazine, crowed: “Profit from the impact of Roxanne’s following! Now on more TV stations than ever before.”

Dolores Evelyn Rosedale was born March 20, 1929, in Minneapolis. Her father, Kenneth, was a civil engineer. Her mother, Thyra, was in charge of receiving and processing evidence at a local courthouse.

As a teenager, she worked as a dental assistant, took courses in fashion design at the Minnesota School of Fine Arts and was a top contender in the Miss Minnesota pageant in 1947.

She left for New York City in late 1949, signed with the Conover modeling agency and quickly found work.

By then, she had adopted the single name Roxanne, and eventually made the change legal. Roddy, her daughter, said in a phone interview that her mother disliked her original name: “She’d say, ‘How could anyone give someone such an ugly name?’”

In 1954, Roxanne married Thomas Roddy and gave birth to Ann the next year, when her time on “Beat the Clock” had expired. That year, she had a small role in Billy Wilder’s comedy “The Seven Year Itch,” starring Marilyn Monroe. In the film, Roxanne and Tom Ewell parodied the famous romantic beach scene in “From Here to Eternity” with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.

Two years later, she had another small part in a drama, “The Young Don’t Cry,” with Sal Mineo and James Whitmore.

She also studied acting with influential teacher Sanford Meisner.

She appeared once on Broadway, in 1956, as a prostitute in “A Hatful of Rain,” a drama about a man with a drug addiction. She told The Daily News of New York that it was the “most exciting experience to date” in her career.

She felt that it was important to advance her career as an actress. As she told The Daily News, she wondered if working on a game show had given viewers “the impression that I was just another dumb blonde because I was given so little to say.”

In 1957, she starred in a summer stock production of George Axelrod’s comedy “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” She played the same role — a bombshell actress named Rita Marlowe — that Jayne Mansfield did on Broadway in 1955 and in the film adaptation two years later.

But as Roxanne’s family grew — she would have five children — she shifted from acting. She continued to model; commented on fashion shows; designed clothing; operated a fashion boutique; and sold furs in Minneapolis.

She and Thomas Roddy divorced in 1979. She married Stanley Shanedling in 1981; he died in 1997. She was at various times known as Roxanne Roddy and Roxanne Shanedling.

In addition to her daughter Ann, she is survived by another daughter, Elizabeth Roddy; her sons, Thomas, David and Michael; four grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and a sister, Kitty Torrentore.

Roxanne encountered Monroe well before appearing with her in “The Seven Year Itch.”

“It was my first week in New York,” she told Earl Wilson, a syndicated gossip columnist, in 1953. “I’d gone to a wholesale house to model dresses. This girl walked in and started taking off her clothes. She was wearing just a dress, stockings and garter belt, and that’s ALL! I said, ‘Oh, this girl doesn’t know what underwear is.’”

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LOWELL, Mass. — Jess Healey scored from the point late in the second period to lift Boston to a 4-3 win over Minnesota on Sunday night in the first game of the inaugural Walter Cup, the championship of the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

The best-of-five series continues Tuesday. Game 1 drew 4,508 fans.

Healey, a defenseman who had one goal during the regular season, got her first playoff goal just 15 seconds after Minnesota’s Taylor Heise scored her second goal, tying it 3-3 with 2:50 left in the second period.

Boston goalie Aerin Frankel survived two power plays, 1 minute and 35 seconds of Minnesota pulling goalie Maddie Rooney for an extra attacker. and 13 shots in the third period. Frankel finished with 30 saves, and Minnesota came up empty on the only three power plays of the game.

Healy got the puck at the left point and she sent a high wrist shot through traffic over Rooney’s glove into the far, top corner.

“We’re just absolutely relentless,” Haley said. “This whole playoff stretch we’ve really shown that, we never gave up. We had a good response every time they got a goal.”

It was the fourth straight playoff win by one goal for third-seeded Boston, which swept second-seeded Montreal 3-0 with all three games decided in overtime.

Minnesota went on the power play just 10 seconds into the game and although that didn’t produce a goal, it set a tone for pressure that resulted in Michela Cava’s goal less than five minutes in.

Susanna Tapani, who had two of the overtime winners in the semifinals, scored the equalizer for Boston 2 1/2 minutes later.

That set the stage for a wild second period that featured five goals.

After Heise scored for Minnesota at 8:04, Taylor Wenczkowski and Hannah Brandt connected 2:21 apart, and Boston led 3-2 with 4:49 remaining in the period.

Heise tied it again about two minutes later but that just set the stage for Healey.

Rooney had 18 saves for Minnesota.

Both teams finished with 35 points in the regular season and didn’t secure a playoff berth until the closing days. Boston beat Minnesota three times in five games and had the tiebreaker for the third seed.

Minnesota won three straight to beat top-seeded Toronto 3-2 in the semifinals.

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As the midnight deadline approached, it remained to be seen late Sunday whether Minnesota lawmakers would take a step toward putting abortion rights in the state Constitution and pass a minimum wage deal for ride-hailing drivers that would end Uber and Lyft’s threats to leave the state.

The 2024 legislative session appears to be closing in on a sputtering end, with many major bills failing to reach the finish line, including a roughly $900 million infrastructure bonding bill and a legal sports betting proposal.

End-of-session negotiations have failed to produce a deal on infrastructure, with Republicans refusing to support a borrowing bill unless Democratic-Farmer-Labor lawmakers concede to a list of demands that include dropping an abortion rights amendment and a gun control proposal.

DFLers did meet some of the GOP demands, such as providing funding for rural emergency medical services and sending religious liberty protections to the governor’s desk. But they still moved forward with the abortion rights amendment, killing the possibility of a bonding deal, which can only pass with a supermajority.

Minnesota’s Legislature doesn’t technically have to do anything this year. Lawmakers passed a two-year budget in 2023, so there’s no risk of a government shutdown. But action on items like bonding and abortion rights may have to wait until the Legislature reconvenes in 2025.

Here’s the status of some of the major items remaining before lawmakers as the Legislature approaches adjournment.

ERA amendment

House DFLers on early Sunday morning passed a bill that would plot a path to place for abortion rights in Minnesota’s Constitution by putting the question to voters in 2026. But it does not appear to have a good chance of making it through the Minnesota Senate before midnight.

Sen. Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, told reporters she thinks she has the votes to pass the measure, but there might not be enough time. The DFL has a one-seat majority in the Senate.

The Senate passed a version of the Equal Rights Amendment last year, but it does not include House language that would put the right to an abortion and protections for LGBTQ people in the state Constitution.

Originally the House was slated to vote on the bill last Monday, but DFL representatives tabled the bill for nearly a week as Republicans gave extended floor speeches on other bills. DFLers accuse GOP lawmakers of delay tactics, but Republicans deny that, saying the matter could have come up months ago.

Uber/Lyft

Members of the House debated a bill to set a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers late Sunday. The Senate is also expected to take up the bill.

DFL lawmakers and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz reached a compromise on minimum wages for ride-hailing drivers that could stop Uber and Lyft’s threats to end service in the state on July 1. The House continued work on the proposal Sunday night and the Senate was expected to take it up later on.

The bill came after weeks of uncertainty about whether the Minnesota Legislature would preempt a minimum wage ordinance approved by the Minneapolis City Council that triggered the ride-share companies’ threats to leave in the first place.

Under the agreement, which ride-share companies say they back, the per-mile pay rate for drivers would be $1.28 per mile and 31 cents per minute.

Bonding

Minnesota passes its budgets in odd-numbered years and in even-numbered years it traditionally passes a public infrastructure borrowing bill known as a bonding bill.

But that likely won’t be the case this year, as Republicans are refusing to help pass a bonding bill unless DFLers concede to a list of demands including dropping the ERA. Bonding is one of their points of leverage because a borrowing bill requires a three-fifths majority to pass.

There isn’t a huge difference between the DFL and GOP bonding proposals. DFLers initially pitched an infrastructure package of around $980 million that’s mostly borrowing combined with around $39 million from the general fund. Republicans proposed about $890 million with $30 million in cash.

Sports betting

While backers of legal sports betting continued projecting optimism on Sunday, the already low odds of a bill making it to the governor’s desk this year only continued to drop as adjournment approached.

Neither the House nor the Senate have passed a sports betting bill, and each chamber would likely pass a different version. Some DFLers in the Senate want a version of the bill that includes protections against problem gambling, presenting another hurdle for legalization.

To get a version of the bill without strong limits on sports betting, DFLers would need Republican votes, and some Republicans have said they’re not interested in a sports betting bill without compromises on other issues.

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