This wasn’t how things were supposed to end. When the Denver Nuggets took a 20-point lead over the Minnesota Timberwolves midway through the deciding game of the Western Conference semifinals, it seemed as if the final chapter of this gripping, eventful and epic series was written: the defending champions, stunned and humiliated in Games 1 , 2 and 6, came off the screen to deliver the decisive blow at the decisive moment. Then something happened. Anthony Edwards happened.
Edwards, the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, has long been described as the future face of the NBA. At 22, he is already the Timberwolves’ undisputed leader – an impressive achievement in itself, given that he plays with another former No. 1 draft pick (Karl-Anthony Towns), an all-time great defenseman (Rudy Gobert) and an astute veteran. guard (Mike Conley Jr). Expelled from the opening exchanges of Game 7 by a Nuggets defense happy to give open looks to the often errant Gobert, Edwards scored just four points in the first half, and his third quarter began inauspiciously: a shot from beyond the arc hit the rim of the edge, so he made another attempt. He got rid of the mistakes, reasserted himself on defense and then ran the length of the court for an easy layup.
Related: Timberwolves pull off greatest Game 7 comeback in NBA history to defeat champion Nuggets
A few uncontested dunks on loose balls won on defense followed, and the way Edwards did them seemed to act as a signal to his teammates. Edwards is a master posterizer, with the full range of tomahawks, windmills, backscratchers and self-alley-oops – many of which have been on display in these playoffs, in which the sight of Ant-Man piercing the rim with protruding authority has been a regular wonder. The dunks on Sunday night were different. There was no theater, no flourishes, no shouts of conquest under the glass. Edwards simply placed the ball in the net and then turned to run back to the other side of the court to perform his defensive duties. They were dunks and woke up the Timberwolves. With a 20-point deficit at the start of the third quarter, Minnesota began an offensive sequence that defined the series and surprised the defending champions. Three-time MVP Nikola Jokic spent the final quarter of the game looking both rheumatic and contrite as he attempted a series of desperate three-pointers to close the gap. But not even Jokic, the NBA’s reigning magician of the improbable, could undo the inevitable. As the final seconds of the game ticked away, Edwards waved goodbye to the Denver crowd. The only role left for Jokic was to criticize his young rival for disrespect.
With a final score of 16 points, this was not Edwards’ best game by far. (That happened in Game 1 against the Nuggets, when he exploded for 43 points.) But it offered a display of many of the mental gifts that made him such a magnetic addition to the ranks of NBA stars, and helped the Timberwolves win over the entire past series: an inert coolness in the moment of maximum danger, the bizarre ability to forget your mistakes, a mischievous gift for winking provocations. Above all, Edwards unwaveringly believes in himself and the people around him. As soon as the Timberwolves were down 3-2 in this series, he immediately announced: “See you Game 7.”
The player to whom Edwards has been compared most often, of course, is Michael Jordan. Many players have been confronted with the label of “the next Jordan” over the past 30 years – some good (Kobe Bryant, Penny Hardaway), some less so (Jerry Stackhouse, Grant Hill) – but none have offered such a rich visual basis for the analogy. like Edwards. The buttery mid-range game, the dunks, the disappearing turnovers: Edwards’s stylistic dossier is full of Jordanian associations, and that’s before we even consider his aerial dominance, the sheer bodily strength that allows Edwards to hang so patiently in the air while your opponents fall like crypto funds around you. But to compare this young board calligrapher, full of movement and exuberant energy, to an old master like Jordan is to miss some of what makes Edwards so insistently special, a talent unlike any other. Edwards grew up as Anthony with brothers named Antony, Antoine and Antoinette – an experience that taught him, one imagines, how to stand out in a world where outsiders are ready to mistake him for someone else. His defensive intensity, his use of the backboard, his lateral dexterity and sheer unpredictability like a body in motion, not to mention his true appreciation for his teammates and the gift he has for making those around him better: the catalog of Edwards’ greatness is both about what makes him different from Jordan and what unites them.
With his chin thrust forward and his eyes twinkling with mischief, Edwards never seems entirely satisfied with the serial miracles he produces on the court. And what miracles they are: only in this series the public was presented with a sequence of moves that no other current player in the world would have been able to do. There was the play in Game 6 when he landed awkwardly on his tailbone, spent a few minutes face down on the floor in apparent agony, then jumped up and promptly sank two perfect free throws.
There were some blocks made with his less-favored left hand, including a monster stoppage by Michael Porter Jr in Game 1 that recalled the ridiculous rejection with which he won a regular season game in March against the Indiana Pacers. There was the delightfully casual fake at the end of Game 6, in which Edwards prepared to shoot with his right hand, then knocked the ball past his marker, hoovered toward the rim and finished with a nonchalant two-handed slam.
There were the three silkies brought down by bureaucratic bloodlessness; the dizzying stops and starts, the changes of direction and the jumps from one side to the other; the many occasions when he ran through the paint, took bad contact, lost his balance and still hit a shot in the air, an eternity seeming to pass as he solved the problem of how to get the ball to advance from his contorted body in the air into the net .
LeBron James, the greatest player of his generation, is Zeus. Steph Curry is basketball’s answer to drone warfare, devastating opponents with his precision from afar. Jokic is a one-man scheme to foul defenders. Depending on the day, Edwards could be all three at once. One moment he’s a sprite, disappearing between markers, the next he’s growing to command space on the court. He is less an ant than one of those deep-sea jellyfish capable of changing shape, volume and appearance at will. His greatest gift, ultimately, may be the gift of spontaneity, of knowing exactly what version of himself the moment demands. In a world of fantasy leagues, here is a true fantasy player, an improvisational genius who operates with an extraterrestrial relationship to space and time.
Above all, Edwards is fun, a can’t-miss American star in a league where the best young players – Victor Wembanyama, Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – are often Canadian or European. After Charles Barkley announced in his postgame interview last night that he hadn’t been to Minnesota in 20 years, Edwards — 39 years younger than Barkley — immediately shot back: “Bring your ass!” Even his on-court trash talk has a punk charm: mic’d up for the first game of this series, Edwards’ first intervention was to offer Porter gives tips on his shooting action. Opponents seem to enjoy playing against him: “Did you catch me?” Jamal Murray could be heard asking for Edwards’ audio after it became clear who his scorer was in Game 1. “Oh, this is going to be fun.” And when they’re not facing him, other players want to be him. In January, while playing against the Memphis Grizzlies, Edwards executed an outrageous alley-oop off the glass in traffic; the next day, former MVP Joel Embiid came out and I did exactly the same thing.
Whether that happens this year or later, the Timberwolves appear certain to capture their first championship under the leadership of their young maestro. The American future of the NBA is already upon us. His name is Anthony Edwards.
