IS ANTHONY EDWARDS THE ROCKING FACE OF THE NBA? SADLY, DURANT AGREES
He aims to “kill everything in front of me” and is doing exactly that, pushing the Minnesota Timberwolves — they do exist — into a title contender’s role as he draws wild comparisons to MJ and Kobe
Do not compare him to Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan. Try BOTH, if you must. When Anthony Edwards makes a lethal remark — “I just want to kill everything in front of me. That’s the main thing, pretty much,” he said — it prompts massive belief from Charles Barkley, who rarely coddles a prodigy of 22.
“Those two would kill you to win a game. There aren't too many players in today's game with that mentality — they all want to be buddy-buddy. But, man, Anthony Edwards is putting everybody on notice,” he said. “He's like, ‘I’m not going to wait for y'all to give me anything. I'm going to take it.’ And I love it.”
A transition of basketball life is abruptly upon us. Edwards is the NBA’s most electric performer in the uniform of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who have to be explained more than mentioned. He paced them to a first-ever sweep of a playoff series, despite 35 years of existence, and thinks they can win an NBA championship this season. They are run by Glen Taylor, 83, who prefers to keep Alex Rodriguez in limited ownership just as Major League Baseball suspended him for steroids freakery. They still play in an arena across from a theater sold out by Prince. Their coach, Chris Finch, will continue with a ruptured patellar tendon after his player, Mike Conley, collided with him.
Who are they? Why do they exist? What is a Timberwolf?
Consider it the domain of Edwards, who reminds us that Jordan and Bryant will have a thrilling successor in a sport currently controlled by Nikola Jokic. “I’m the best player,” Edwards has said, often, as he quickly buttresses his young legacy. What exactly was his D-Generation crotch chop one night? His hands swinging forcefully into his midsection? Does that make a highlight tape in 2024?
We’ll know more after he faces the champion Denver Nuggets, most likely. With his seven three-pointers Sunday, he scored 40 and eliminated his favorite boyhood player, Kevin Durant, who has done little in five seasons after bolting a brief role in the Golden State dynasty. If nothing else, he is showing Edwards how not to spend his latter years, trying to form superteams in Phoenix and Brooklyn. Both have turned into disasters, with the Suns looking closely at coach Frank Vogel — imagine, winning a pandemic title in 2020 and then being dumped twice — and making us ask about Durant’s core ambitions.
“I didn’t sleep last night,” he said before vanishing in Game 4.
Why?
“That’s life itself,” he said.
For now, he was left to hug Edwards for a long moment and wish his protege well as the league’s energized face. Durant turns 36 and will be left with his duo of titles with Steph Curry. Why did he ever leave, because Draymond Green ran him out? The Warriors won another, in 2022, but Durant wasn’t happy in Vogel’s offense with Devin Booker and Bradley Beal after he was slogged by the worst of Kyrie Irving in New York. It’s amazing to think Edwards, with Karl-Anthony Towns supporting him, might reach the title level soon.
“Um, I think everybody knows that’s my favorite player of all time, so that was probably one of the best feelings ever in my whole life, for sure,” he said this past week about besting Durant.
“You get hot, and you make tough shots, you’re going to feel excited about yourself,” Durant said. “So impressed with Ant. My favorite player to watch. Just grown so much since he came into the league. At 22, just his love for the game shines bright. That's one of the reasons why I like him the most. He just loves basketball. He's grateful to be in this position. He's grateful to take advantage of every opportunity he's gotten. Love everything about Ant. Everything. Will be watching him going forward and you know he's going to go out there and play extremely hard every single night. He’s going to be somebody that I'm going to be following for the rest of his career.”
He might want to study the smile on Edwards’ face. What happened to his good times? No star in sports has brooded more than Durant as he fails to mobilize upwardly. It was his error to join forces with Irving, who was fighting COVID-19 and the world, and he realized his supporting cast was inadequate when the Suns acquired Beal and created a terrible threesome. At Christmas, he couldn’t set aside a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that he was frustrated, writing on social media, “Woj says somebody else ‘feels’ that I’m frustrated and it turned into me being mentally checked out. This sh— crazy, these people can flat out lie on my name and make sh— up and you people will believe it.” At his age, he should be finished with X and Instagram. He can’t escape the fray.
“I think everybody would say that the details matter and it's something that we kind of passed by and didn't think was a big deal but kind of came back and bit us in the ass,” Booker said. “Hopefully, everybody is feeling the same type of hurt. I have to be better. Kevin has to be better. Brad has to be better. Coach has to be better. We're the leaders of the team. We can't be out there unprepared. Roster-wise, everybody talks about the firepower, but you look around the league: It comes down to the details. It’s a super important thing. You can't just go out there and think you're going to win off talent. The game is more complicated than that.”
Said Vogel, who said he has owner Mat Ishbia’s “full support” and should flash his championship ring before we forget: “It's disappointing. There's no other way to put it. There's no worse professional feeling in the world than getting swept in the NBA playoffs. I've never been a part of it. I feel pretty low right now. I want to speak to our fans directly and say, I share your passion. I'm as disappointed as y'all are. I share that with you all. But we got beat by a better team this year. And we put this team together with the mindset that we have a three- to five-year window where every year we're going to have a chance to have a team with the firepower to compete for it. But this league is loaded with firepower. We've got a talented group; so do the Timberwolves. The top 10 teams in the Western Conference are loaded with talent as well. We've got to evaluate and figure out ways we can get better.”
We won’t remember Durant as a true leader. He followed Curry and won two Finals MVPs, but since then, he can’t create stability, as chronicled by a story in the Athletic. A team can’t spend outrageously — Durant has two years and $106 million left, Booker’s new $221 million deal starts next season, Beal was acquired with $207 million on his contract — and settle for scraps. Vogel lashed into his team this month and realized no one in the locker room was listening, which means he was the wrong hire for Ishbia, who gave him a $31 million deal for five years. Who might be next for the former Michigan State benchwarmer, a call to … Tom Izzo? I’m kidding. I think. Until then, Durant heads off to the Paris Olympics with Booker and Edwards, whose zeal will be needed as the U.S. relies on aging James, Durant and Joel Embiid.
“You reflect back on the season, we were just inconsistent with our play and the style of play that we wanted,” Durant said. “But I think guys will dig deep this summer, work on what they need to work on individually, the coaches will make adjustments because we’ve got stuff on film from all season on who we can be.”
And who they are not.
As for Edwards, he already is acting in movies with Adam Sandler and giving America a native-born megastar, placing prime internationals such as Jokic, Embiid, Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo just beneath him in the top five. The hope inside the NBA commissioner’s office is that he has overcome personal issues. He apologized last winter when a woman went public with her positive pregnancy test, which came with a $100,000 wire transfer from him. Two years ago, he used homophobic language in an Instagram. He told Vanity Fair in February, “I don’t want people to have a bad thought when Anthony Edwards is in their mind. I’m always working on being better.”
He grew up in Atlanta. When Minnesota drafted him No. 1 overall in 2020, we weren’t sure of him. Lately, his dunks are monstrous and he also creates shots, long-range and mid-range, and cannot be stopped. Jordan has noticed, saying he should be the league’s face at the same age he was as a rookie. “We've watched him grow — evolve as a leader, as a player, as a man,” Wolves center Rudy Gobert said. “It's been fun.”
What’s about to happen could crack the NBA earth. The Timberwolves, in the Finals? Edwards, as Jordan and Kobe? “It was like, you've got to beat us,” he said of the Suns. “And I showed them.”
Kevin Durant can sleep all summer. That’s life itself.
Anthony Edwards just wants to kill.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.