Anthony Edwards scored 24 points over the final 16 and a half minutes of basketball. Nikola Jokic scored 61 points while playing 34 straight minutes.

Minnesota trailed by eight with five minutes to play in regulation, then led by six with two minutes to play in the first overtime.

And all of that paled in comparison to the chaos that took place over the final 18 seconds of the second overtime in Denver in Tuesday’s nationally-televised affair.

Minnesota inbounded the ball, trailing the Nuggets 139-138. Edwards got the ball and was almost immediately doubled, a look Denver employed often down the stretch. Edwards made a number of nice reads out of the double team Tuesday, but this bounce pass went to no one. Russell Westbrook scooped up the loose ball and off he and Christian Braun went on a 2-on-1 fastbreak.

They passed the ball back and forth until Westbrook had a wide-open layup at the rim that should’ve put Denver up three with nine ticks to play … but he came up well short and it clanked off the bottom of the iron. Nickeil Alexander-Walker grabbed the rebound and back Minnesota went the other way.

Mike Conley got the ball to Edwards, who encroached the paint as the final seconds waned off the clock, and kicked out to an open Alexander-Walker.

Alexander-Walker was brilliant Tuesday, knocking down five triples while also tallying eight assists and seven rebounds. But his attempt at the buzzer hit the front iron. It appeared as though the Wolves had dropped a thriller … until they hadn’t.

The ref standing right next to Alexander-Walker signaled a foul. Sure enough, a hard-charging Westbrook hit Alexander-Walker’s arm and body as he frantically tried to close out on the shooter. So, with 0.1 seconds to play in the second overtime, Alexander-Walker went to the line for three free-throws.

He swished the first two, securing Minnesota’s 140-139 victory, the Wolves’ fourth-straight victory in perhaps the wildest game of the entire NBA regular season.

Minnesota was without Donte DiVincenzo and Naz Reid, who were suspended as a result of their roles in the fight with Detroit on Sunday. Denver was sans Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., both of which were surprising absences. Murray experienced hamstring tightness on Tuesday, while Porter Jr. missed the game for personal reasons.

Denver doesn’t possess anything resembling Minnesota’s depth. So its short-handed roster had to be carried by Jokic and Aaron Gordon. The Serbian MVP candidate had 10 rebounds and 10 assists to go with his gaudy point total, which was a new career high for him. Jokic didn’t sit a second minute after halftime, as Denver coach Mike Malone went all in on trying to pull off the victory.

Yet Jokic never seemed to fatigue. He continued to generate good shots for himself and his teammates. Unfortunately for him, the only teammate knocking any of those looks down was Gordon. The forward, who was absent for last month’s meeting in which Minnesota thrashed the Nuggets in Denver, finished with 30 points and eight rebounds. He and Jokic sparked a flurry to open the fourth quarter that quickly moved the Nuggets from down five to up two.

Minnesota was stuck in neutral for the next four minutes of action, until its best player finally came to life. Edwards was largely a bystander for the first 40-plus minutes of Tuesday’s affair. But he nailed a triple to trim Minnesota’s deficit to eight with fewer than seven minutes to go in the fourth. Then he used his gravity to set up teammates for a series of plays.

He then hit a triple to knot the game at 108-108 with 2:34 to play, and hit another to put Minnesota up 25 seconds later.

At that point, it appeared as though the Wolves were set to put away the Nuggets. But that never happened. Minnesota had chances to win the game at the end of regulation and overtime. But the final offensive possessions left much to be desired.

With the game tied at 112-112, Julius Randle’s triple try at the end of the fourth was no good.

With 24 seconds to play in overtime, Minnesota forced a rare Jokic miss to get the ball back with a two-point lead. At that point, Denver would’ve had to foul. But Edwards stunningly threw the ball across the court, and the pass was picked off by Braun. Jokic tied the game on Denver’s ensuing possession, and Minnesota’s final shot attempt was an air ball from Jaden McDaniels.

The second overtime was the whackiest of all, even before the wild final sequence. There were eight lead changes over that five-minute span. The game was knotted with 20 seconds to play, when officials didn’t get a good view on an out-of-bounds call, and therefore ruled a jump ball. McDaniels fouled Jokic on the resulting jump, and the center hit one free throw to put Denver on top.

And the chaos ensued from there.

With the win, Minnesota (44-32) completed a season sweep of Denver, and has now topped the Nuggets (47-29) six-straight times dating back to last year’s second-round playoff series.

More importantly for the Wolves, they moved into a tie for the all-important No. 6 seed with Memphis. The Grizzlies own the head-to-head tiebreaker, but they’re in free fall at the moment and have a far more difficult schedule than Minnesota with six games to play.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Val Kilmer, the brooding, versatile actor who played fan favorite Iceman in “Top Gun,” donned a voluminous cape as Batman in “Batman Forever” and portrayed Jim Morrison in “The Doors,” has died. He was 65.

Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, said in an email to The Associated Press.

Val Kilmer died from pneumonia. He had recovered after a 2014 throat cancer diagnosis that required two tracheotomies.

“I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed,” he says toward the end of “Val,” the 2021 documentary on his career. “And I am blessed.”

Kilmer, the youngest actor ever accepted to the prestigious Juilliard School at the time he attended, experienced the ups and downs of fame more dramatically than most. His break came in 1984’s spy spoof “Top Secret!” followed by the comedy “Real Genius” in 1985. Kilmer would later show his comedy chops again in films including “MacGruber” and “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”

FILE – Val Kilmer poses for a portrait, Jan. 9, 2014, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

His movie career hit its zenith in the early 1990s as he made a name for himself as a dashing leading man, starring alongside Kurt Russell and Bill Paxton in 1993’s “Tombstone,” as Elvis’ ghost in “True Romance” and as a bank-robbing demolition expert in Michael Mann’s 1995 film “Heat” with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

The actor — who took part in the Method branch of Suzuki arts training — threw himself into parts. When he played Doc Holliday in “Tombstone,” he filled his bed with ice for the final scene to mimic the feeling of dying from tuberculosis. To play Morrison, he wore leather pants all the time, asked castmates and crew to only refer to him as Jim Morrison and blasted The Doors for a year.

That intensity also gave Kilmer a reputation that he was difficult to work with, something he grudgingly agreed with later in life, but always defending himself by emphasizing art over commerce.

FILE – Val Kilmer poses for a portrait in New York, Tuesday, April 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, File)

“In an unflinching attempt to empower directors, actors and other collaborators to honor the truth and essence of each project, an attempt to breathe Suzukian life into a myriad of Hollywood moments, I had been deemed difficult and alienated the head of every major studio,” he wrote in his memoir, “I’m Your Huckleberry.”

One of his more iconic roles — hotshot pilot Tom “Iceman” Kazansky opposite Tom Cruise — almost didn’t happen. Kilmer was courted by director Tony Scott for “Top Gun” but initially balked. “I didn’t want the part. I didn’t care about the film. The story didn’t interest me,” he wrote in his memoir. He agreed after being promised that his role would improve from the initial script. He would reprise the role in the film’s 2022 sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick.”

One career nadir was playing Batman in Joel Schumacher’s goofy, garish “Batman Forever” with Nicole Kidman and opposite Chris O’Donnell‘s Robin — before George Clooney took up the mantle for 1997’s “Batman & Robin” and after Michael Keaton played the Dark Knight in 1989’s “Batman” and 1992’s “Batman Returns.”

Janet Maslin in The New York Times said Kilmer was “hamstrung by the straight-man aspects of the role,” while Roger Ebert deadpanned that he was a “completely acceptable” substitute for Keaton. Kilmer, who was one and done as Batman, blamed much of his performance on the suit.

The Times was the first to report his death on Tuesday.

“When you’re in it, you can barely move and people have to help you stand up and sit down,” Kilmer said in “Val.” “You also can’t hear anything and after a while people stop talking to you, it’s very isolating. It was a struggle for me to get a performance past the suit, and it was frustrating until I realised that my role in the film was just to show up and stand where I was told to.”

FILE – Actor Val Kilmer attends the British premiere of his new movie “Alexander” in London, Jan. 5, 2005. (AP Photo/John D McHugh, File)

His next projects were the film version of the 1960s TV series “The Saint” — fussily putting on wigs, accents and glasses — and “The Island of Dr. Moreau” with Marlon Brando, which became one of the decade’s most infamously cursed productions.

David Gregory’s 2014 documentary “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau,” described a cursed set that included a hurricane, Kilmer bullying director Richard Stanley, the firing of Stanley via fax (who sneaked back on set as an extra with a mask on) and extensive rewrites by Kilmer and Brando. The older actor told the younger at one point: “‘It’s a job now, Val. A lark. We’ll get through it.’ I was as sad as I’ve ever been on a set,” Kilmer wrote in his memoir.

In 1996, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story about Kilmer titled ″The Man Hollywood Loves to Hate.″ The directors Schumacher and John Frankenheimer, who finished “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” said he was difficult. Frankenheimer said there were two things he would never do: ″Climb Mount Everest and work with Val Kilmer again.″

Other artists came to his defense, like D. J. Caruso, who directed Kilmer in ″The Salton Sea″ and said the actor simply liked to talk out scenes and enjoyed having a director’s attention.

″Val needs to immerse himself in a character. I think what happened with directors like Frankenheimer and Schumacher is that Val would ask a lot of questions, and a guy like Schumacher would say, ‘You’re Batman! Just go do it,’″ Caruso told The New York Times in 2002.

After “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” the movies were smaller, like David Mamet human-trafficking thriller “Spartan”; ″Joe the King″ in 1999, in which he played a paunchy, abusive alcoholic; and playing the doomed ’70s porn star John Holmes in 2003’s “Wonderland.” He also threw himself into his one-man stage show “Citizen Twain,” in which he played Mark Twain.

“I enjoy the depth and soul the piece has that Twain had for his fellow man and America,” he told Variety in 2018. “And the comedy that’s always so close to the surface, and how valuable his genius is for us today. Still, we battle racism and greed. The same country, it’s greatness and it’s tragedy.”

Kilmer spent his formative years in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles. He attended Chatsworth High School alongside future Oscar winner Kevin Spacey and future Emmy winner Mare Winningham. At 17, he was the youngest drama student ever admitted at the Juilliard School in 1981.

Shortly after he left for Juilliard, his younger brother, 15-year-old Wesley, suffered an epileptic seizure in the family’s Jacuzzi and died on the way to the hospital. Wesley was an aspiring filmmaker when he died.

″I miss him and miss his things. I have his art up. I like to think about what he would have created. I’m still inspired by him,″ Kilmer told the Times.

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While still at Juilliard, Kilmer co-wrote and appeared in the play “How It All Began” and later turned down a role in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” for the Broadway play, “Slab Boys,” alongside Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn.

Kilmer published two books of poetry (including “My Edens After Burns”) and was nominated for a Grammy in 2012 for spoken word album for “The Mark of Zorro.” He was also a visual artist and a lifelong Christian Scientist.

He dated Cher, and married and divorced actor Joanne Whalley.

He is survived by their two children, Mercedes and Jack.

Kennedy reported from New York.

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and THOMAS BEAUMONT, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Judge Susan Crawford preserved liberals’ narrow majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday by defeating conservative Brad Schimel, but in a way the real loser of the election was billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk and his affiliated groups sunk at least $21 million into the normally low-profile race and paid three individual voters $1 million each for signing a petition in an effort to goose turnout in the pivotal battleground state contest. That made the race the first major test of the political impact of Musk, whose prominence in President Donald Trump’s administration has skyrocketed with his chaotic cost-cutting initiative that has slashed federal agencies.

Crawford and the Democrats who backed her made Musk the focus of their arguments for holding the seat, contending he was “buying” the election, which set records for the costliest judicial race in history.

“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” Crawford said in her victory speech. “And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale.”

Elon Musk speaks at a town hall holding a check Sunday, March 30, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Trump endorsed Schimel as the race turned into a proxy fight over national political issues. The state’s high court can rule on cases involving voting rights and redistricting in a state likely to be at the center of both next year’s midterm elections and the 2028 presidential contest.

But Musk’s involvement dialed those dynamics up to 11: “A seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western civilization,” the billionaire said Tuesday in a last-ditch call to voters on his social media site X. “I think it matters for the future of the world.”

Notably, America PAC, the super PAC backed by Musk, spent at least $6 million on vendors who sent door-to-door canvassers across the state, according to the non-partisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. It was a reprise of what the group did across the seven most competitive presidential battleground states, including Wisconsin, which were carried by Trump in November.

But the end results this time were not good for Musk. Despite the millions he spent on Schimel, as of late Tuesday night the Supreme Court candidate was losing by four percentage points more than the other Republican-backed statewide candidate, Brittany Kinser, who also fell short in her bid for superintendent of public instruction.

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Musk’s court race defeat wasn’t only because of crushing Democratic margins in deep blue cities like Madison and Milwaukee. Crawford’s margins were higher in places where the Musk-backed group America PAC had been active, including Sauk County, just north of Madison, which Crawford was carrying by 10 points after Trump won it by less than 2 points in November.

In Brown County, the home of Green Bay where Musk headlined a campaign rally with 2,000 people on Sunday, Crawford beat Schimel. Trump won the county by 7 percentage points last year.

Musk was silent on his X platform in the wake of Crawford’s victory, reposting a message about Vietnam and tariffs but nothing on the Supreme Court contest. The platform was rife with criticism from Trump opponents for his involvement in the race.

“Please send @elonmusk to all the close races!” Jon Favreau, former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, wrote.

“Elon Musk is not good at this,” J.B. Pritzker, Illinois’ Democratic governor and a billionaire himself who donated to support Crawford, posted on X.

Voters definitely had Musk on their minds.

“There’s an insane situation going on with the Trump administration, and it feels like Elon Musk is trying to buy votes,” said Kenneth Gifford, a 22-year-old Milwaukee college student, as he cast his ballot on Tuesday. “I want an actual, respectable democracy.”

Others may not have had their vote decided by the billionaire but were all-too aware of the money pouring into their state.

Jim Seeger, a 68-year-old retiree who previously worked in communications and marketing, said he voted for Schimel because he wants Republicans to maintain their outsized majority in Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, which could be at risk if Crawford wins and the court orders the maps redrawn. But, he added, he was disappointed the election had become a “financial race.”

“I think it’s a shame that we have to spend this much money, especially on a judicial race,” Seeger said as he voted in Eau Claire.

Wisconsin’s Democratic Attorney General, Josh Kaul, sued to bar Musk from making his payments to voters if they signed a petition against “activist judges.” The state Supreme Court unanimously declined to rule on the case over a technicality.

Musk swooped into the race shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Republicans were pessimistic about being able to win the seat. They lost a longtime conservative majority on the state high court in 2023, and Democrats have excelled in turning out their educated, politically tuned-in coalition during obscure elections such as the one in Wisconsin.

Musk duplicated and expanded on some of the methods he used in the final weeks of last year’s presidential race, when he spent more than $200 million on Trump’s behalf in the seven swing states, including Wisconsin.

This time, in addition to the $1 million checks, Musk offered to pay $20 to anyone who signed up on his group’s site to knock on doors for Schimel and posted a photo of themselves as proof. His organization promised $100 to every voter who signed the petition against liberal judges and another $100 for every signer they referred.

Democrats were happy to make Musk a lightning rod in the race.

“People do not want to see Elon Musk buying election after election after election,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said Monday. “If it works here, he’s going to do it all over the country.”

Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Washington contributed to this report.

PRESTON, Minn. — The identical twin sister accused of lying to investigators about who was driving an SUV involved in a fatal Amish buggy crash was sentenced to 90 days in jail and 120 days of house arrest.

Sarah Beth Petersen, 37, of Kellogg, appeared in Fillmore County District Court for her sentencing hearing on Monday.

Petersen and her identical twin sister Samantha Jo Petersen, of Wabasha, are accused of attempting to switch places after Samantha’s SUV struck a two-wheeled horse-drawn buggy on Sept. 25, 2023, in rural Fillmore County. Two children and a horse were killed. Two other children were injured.

Sarah Petersen was charged in February 2024 with 16 felony counts, relating to aiding an offender and taking responsibility for criminal acts. One year later, she pleaded guilty to two felony counts of criminal vehicular operation that caused great bodily harm, both involving her taking responsibility for the criminal acts of another.

A memorandum filed by the state earlier Monday said both the prosecution and defense agreed that Petersen would serve no prison time.

Sarah Beth Petersen, left, and Samantha Jo Petersen

During her sentencing hearing, Fillmore County Attorney Brett Corson requested that Petersen be ordered to serve six months in jail.

Corson proceeded to inform the court of Petersen’s previous convictions in 2016 and 2017 when she was charged with misrepresenting herself as her sister when stopped by law enforcement.

A victim services advocate read a statement from the parents of the children who died. Their letter said it hurt them to see “how lightly” Petersen took the incident.

“We’ve been given a life sentence, and our lives will never be the same,” the letter read.

Although Petersen deceived law enforcement by claiming she was the driver, defense lawyer Dan McIntosh argued that Petersen was not the one to directly cause harm.

“It was misguided and it was wrong, but she was trying to help out her sister,” he said.

McIntosh called Timothy Volz, Petersen’s therapist, to the stand. Volz testified that Petersen has been dealing with the “emotional trauma” of the accident and plans to continue seeking treatment, regardless of the sentence.

Petersen then addressed the court, apologizing to the family and law enforcement.

Judge Jeremy Clinefelter accepted her guilty plea and ordered her to begin serving a 90-day jail sentence on April 25. She will also serve 120 days on house arrest and was ordered to pay a $1,500 fine. He dismissed the remaining 14 counts.

“This conduct was not your conduct that caused the tragic events of that day,” Clinefelter said.

However, he told Petersen that her lies to law enforcement still deserve consequences. He referenced that in the initial police reports, one of Petersen’s children told their teacher what happened at the crash scene.

“Even your kids knew better than you did,” Clinefelter said.

A hearing is scheduled for Samantha Jo Petersen on June 9. After Monday’s hearing, Corson told the Post Bulletin that a negotiated resolution in Petersen’s case is in the works. She is charged with criminal vehicular homicide, felony criminal operation and driving while impaired, among other violations. Four counts, including the element that Petersen was under a combination of methamphetamine and THC, were dismissed. Petersen’s criminal history includes previous convictions for driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Witnesses who first arrived at the crash scene told a captain with the Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office that they saw a woman they presumed was involved in the crash speaking on a phone. Later, another woman appeared at the scene who looked similar to the first woman but was wearing different clothing.

As Sarah Petersen sat in the squad car, audio recording equipment picked up a conversation between the sisters. The two discussed how law enforcement could not tell them apart.

“There’s no way they would ever know the difference between the two of us so they can’t tell,” Sarah Petersen could be heard saying.

In a search of Samantha Petersen’s phone, investigators found text messages from her to friends including one where she wrote: “Made Sarah come and take the fall for it so I wouldn’t go to prison.”

Samantha had also used her phone to search “What happens if you get in an accident with an Amish buggy and kill two people,” “how to lock an iphone cops have,” and “if you hit a buggy and kill two people are you going to prison?”

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