WHEN ANT-MAN BECOMES JORDAN, THE NEW NBA IS DEVILISHLY COMPELLING
As a fresh TV deal swirls, everyone is forgetting the last quarter-century — with comparisons of Edwards and Brunson bypassing LeBron and Kobe and cutting to the ‘90s, when the greatest player ruled
How fascinating to see 2024 reach back and embrace the ‘90s? How curious when a newfangled NBA forgets a legend last observed with his arm around Patrick Mahomes, at a Formula 1 party in Miami, where the football hero was celebrating his third Super Bowl victory while LeBron James was eliminated again?
It didn’t require a memorable shrug, after consecutive 40-point performances at age 22, for Anthony Edwards to amass extensive comparisons to Michael Jeffrey Jordan. Is the Ant-Man the next MJ? Have we suddenly forgotten the last quarter-century of hoop dreams? I was among the first to make such a suggestion. Others followed.
“I’m not saying who, Reg. But it looks kiiiiiiinda familiar,” Jamal Crawford told Reggie Miller. “Late game, takeover in the mid-post, fadeaway style?”
“Say who Jamal,” Miller said. “What you talkin’ ‘bout?”
“I’m getting there, Reg,” Crawford said. “I’m getting there.”
Kevin Garnett already is there, calling him “a young ’84 Jordan,” which means we have 14 more seasons of hysteria. We’re hearing about similarities on a nightly basis, from their mannerisms to their fourth-quarter dominations to their ability to revive ailing Midwestern franchises. Closer to the point, players active in today’s game are dropping Jordan in Edwards references. Not Kobe Bryant. Not LeBron.
“I think a young Michael Jordan, bro, honestly. He’s unbelievable,” said Mike Conley, his teammate with the Minnesota Timberwolves. “I think more than anything with him has been his mentality. I've never met a guy or been a teammate with a guy who believes more in himself than Anthony Edwards.”
“He’s the face of the league,” said teammate Karl-Anthony Towns. “He hates when I say it, but it’s true. Like I said, ‘Future so bright, got to put the sunglasses on.’ ”
It finally reached the point where Ant was blown away and said, “I want it to stop. He’s the greatest of all time. I can’t be compared to him.” He didn’t say it to ESPN, where Kendrick Perkins called him the league’s next face. He said it to Fox Sports, where he added, “No, no pressure. It’s just not possible.” He is denying the force of history, though with a 2-0 lead over the defending champion Denver Nuggets, strong cases can be made that he will face the Boston Celtics in the Finals. That would be Edwards playing in TD Garden, on the same block where Jordan scored 63.
“I don’t want to be compared to somebody of such caliber,” he said recently. “I mean, I haven’t did anything on his level yet. But I love it. I love that they got faith in me, for sure. I mean, they not wrong.”
They not wrong, he said, with even Jordan noticing a familiar arc in Edwards’ game. Never has he been vocal about his so-called successors, including James, once telling me, “What do you think?” I’ve made it clear — James is an all-time creature, in the top five, but he is not Jordan. Is it possible Edwards might be in downtown Minneapolis? “I swear Anthony Edwards reminds me of the 22 year old Jordan I played against…But Ants STRONGER and even MORE Explosive,” Mychal Thompson tweeted. “SCARY aint it?” It’s scarier to think Denver’s Jamal Murray was so disgusted that he threw a heating pad and a towel in the direction of an official, which earned him a $100,000 fine when he should have been suspended for Game 3. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Play Prince. Let Alex Rodriguez dance at courtside. The Wolves are moving on, perhaps to a championship.
Crazier is the idea that Jalen Brunson hears the same music. He is 27, rising atop New York after scoring 40 or more points in four straight playoff games. He also has contributed at least five assists in those games, making him the first NBA player ever with those postseason stat lines. The grind is evident on his face, taking over games when opponents know what is coming. Monday night, after the Knicks took a 1-0 lead over Indiana, teammate Donte DiVincenzo described him as “Michael Jordan.”
“If you know my friends, you should know they’re all a-holes, first of all,” Brunson said. “They’re all sarcastic, so I just try to stop him before he kept going. I don’t really worry about it. I understand what’s going on, so it’s definitely obviously pretty cool, and it makes it better to know it comes off a win, most importantly. But honestly, no matter what the situation was, positive or negative, I have to come back and be better.”
In a sport that involves solo inventiveness on digital devices, you might wonder how the media world is evolving. The new deals will involve ESPN, which will pay $2.6 billion a year for an 11-year period — including the superstar gazes of Edwards, Brunson and Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — that includes the Finals and one conference final. But also in the central mix is Amazon, which will pay $1.8 billion annually for a package including the other conference final and Saturday night games. That means NBC dukes it out with TNT — Warner Bros. Discovery — for the third slot. If NBC wins, you’ll hear the NBA on NBC theme associated with … Michael Jordan. That would be perfect for Edwards, while Charles Barkley is a free agent looking for broadcasting work as the raging “Inside the NBA” disappears.
“I put an opt-out in a couple years because I wanted to cover my ass when it comes to this situation,” Barkley said. “So I am actually in a really great position. Listen, I love TNT, they’ve been great to me. I wanted to make sure that if we lost the NBA, I could be a free agent.”
For now, we’ve left behind an age of LeBron, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant. For now, we are enjoying the new harvest, including the Thunder, who likely will face the Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals. Who is Oklahoma City’s head coach? Mark Daigneault, merely 39, who came from the G-League after serving as a student manager at Connecticut under Jim Calhoun. That’s his past? Say hello to Sam Presti, a master, who rebuilt the team around SGA, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams and Luguentz Dort. He’s known as Lu, helping shut down Luka Doncic in Game 1. His sprained right knee could mean a quick ouster for Dallas, which suffers as he shoots 5 of 35 from three-point range in his last four games, the worst percentage in NBA playoff history.
“Who cares? We lost. I’ve gotta be better. We’ve gotta be better,” Doncic said. “We gotta focus. They are a great team, a great defensive team, so it’s not going to be easy at all.”
“We have to put a complete game together against this young OKC team because they have an endless amount of energy,” Kyrie Irving said. “They never stop attacking.”
Said Daigneault: “It’s a muscle we’ve built at this point.”
In the conference finals, Boston and New York would be consumed on the East Coast. Minnesota and Oklahoma City? That will be America’s first scrutiny of Edwards, whose act is wearing down the Nuggets. “To be honest, he’s a special player,” said Nikola Jokic, who hasn’t performed like a three-time MVP. “I have huge respect for him and everything he can do everything on the floor.”
He contributes mightily on the defensive end, like the Chicago Bulls of Jordan and Scottie Pippen. “They can really get into your body and pressure, and they are really aggressive and physical. It’s why they are the best defense in the league,” Jokic said. “All five of them are aggressive. They really push you off your spots. They know what they are doing, and that’s why it’s been hard for us to score.”
“The body language of our guys is not where it needs to be,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “We got beat up in our building. We got embarrassed in front of our fans.”
So much for the Joker dynasty. Watch the second coming, I dare say. Ant-Man plays in the memory of his mother, who died of cancer when he was 14 in a single-parent home. In his mind, he has reached only “40 percent” of his basketball prime. “I’m not even touching my prime yet,” he said.
When he does?
Some of us will need urgent assistance.
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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.