SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Anthony Edwards scored 31 points and Jaylen Nowell added a career-high 30 to lead Minnesota to a 143-118 win over Utah on Wednesday night amid word the Timberwolves, Jazz and Los Angeles Lakers were part of an eight-player swap hours ahead of the NBA trade deadline.

“It was crazy, the last six hours,” Edwards said. “But, I mean, we’re here to play basketball at the end of the day. We can’t really feed into that — we have nothing to do with that. (My teammates) did a great job of staying locked in and they kept me locked in.”

Playing loose, the Timberwolves set a season high with 79 points in the first half and led 107-80 midway through the third quarter, helped by 64% shooting from the field and 61% from 3-point range.

While not speaking directly about a trade that hadn’t been announced, Minnesota coach Chris Finch detailed the difficulty if playing while the roster was in flux.

“We just talked briefly about things before taking the floor. These things, it’s unfortunate timing, you don’t ever get to pick your timing. Maybe in some ways, it was good that we could just play a game and not have to overthink things. But guys were ready,” Finch said.

Luka Garza scored a career-high 25 points and the Timberwolves made 23 3-pointers at a 54% shooting clip, tying their highest output of the season.

“It was definitely strange,” Garza said of the deal happening just before the game. “But I don’t want to ever look back in my time in NBA and be like, I didn’t make the most of what was my childhood dream.”

The three-team trade was confirmed to The Associated Press on Wednesday night by a person with knowledge of the deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the teams hadn’t announced the major deal made ahead of Thursday afternoon’s trade deadline.

In the deal, the Timberwolves sent D’Angelo Russell to the Lakers, where he played his first two NBA seasons from 2015-17. Utah shipped Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Mike Conley to Minnesota and dealt Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley to the Lakers. The Jazz received Russell Westbrook, Juan Toscano-Anderson and Damian Jones from the Lakers, as well as a first-round draft pick in 2027.

The Jazz were short-handed in the game without four players who have logged significant minutes this season, as the teams were just shells of their former selves.

The Timberwolves were also missing a host of regulars as Rudy Gobert (groin), Kyle Anderson (back) and Austin Rivers (suspension) were held out, and Karl-Anthony Towns is still sidelined with a right calf strain.

Lauri Markkanen scored 21 points and Collin Sexton had 20 in Utah’s worst home loss of the season. Their worst road loss of the season was a 26-point defeat to Milwaukee on Dec. 17.

“Credit to Minnesota, they made a lot of shots and we missed a lot of make-able shots,” Utah coach Will Hardy said of his team making just 31 of 65 shots in the paint. “They made 23 3s at 54% and that was too hard for us to overcome.”

This Jazz have assembled a formidable collection of draft capital, including key pieces from Minnesota in last summer’s Gobert deal.