WHEN EDWARDS TALKS ABOUT SEVEN NBA TITLES, NO. 1 MIGHT BE COMING SOON
The Minnesota Timberwolves finally made a formal announcement — they are alive and well, in Year 35 — and used Ant-Man’s forecast to beat the Denver Nuggets and perhaps set up their first championship
Please don’t equate Anthony Edwards to Michael Jordan just yet, if heaven can wait and ecstasy can pause. But this segment of sports history did happen: He predicted the Minnesota Timberwolves would eliminate the Denver Nuggets, which happened Sunday night at 5,280 feet above sea level and in the real world. His forecast not only eliminated Nikola Jokic (and his cute commercials) from another championship but quieted the folly that any NBA franchise can follow its supposed wits.
He decided his team, woebegone for decades, was better than the champions. The Game 7 triumph went down as Edwards hit only 6 of 24 shots but relied on Karl-Anthony Towns, who carried the Wolves with 23 points, 12 rebounds and defensive plaudits in an astounding victory. What blasted through a stunned Ball Arena is exactly how Edwards said the title removal would transpire, around a parable that he is finally The Next MJ.
“The real reason I held up seven, it’s because I’m getting seven rings to surpass my father,” he said before the 98-90 win, referring to Jordan’s career six-pack. “I got that MJ chromosome inside me. I’m about to eat some good chicken nuggets.”
When he wasn’t so juiced, he made his absolute point. “We feel like we’re just the better team,” Edwards pointed out. He showed up and proved he’s the most electric basketball player of the new era — do you prefer Luka Doncic, Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — while aiding a cause that shut down Jokic’s back-to-back visions. It’s crazy watching a team that dominated the 2023 postseason fall apart in the final two games of a best-of-seven series. The Wolves slowed Jokic and Jamal Murray and never forgot the beefery, recalling to ESPN how Murray trash-talked Mike Conley last year.
“He was talking s—,” Edwards said of a post-game cocktail meeting after the Nuggets bounced them. “He was telling Mike, ‘I’m sick of you, you can't guard me,’ and all that. I told him, ‘We'll be back. You'll see us again when we're fully loaded.’ ’’
Fully loaded means an operation with offensive heroics, when required, and supreme defense. It sounds like the bluster of a 22-year-old superhero who intends to win his first championship. Why not the Wolves? They have more poise than the Dallas Mavericks, who must deal with Doncic’s moods and referee rants. They have Game 7 prowess in Towns and Rudy Gobert, who scored eight points in the fourth quarter and silenced critics who thought he should have been benched. Most of all, they have Edwards, who smells the Larry O’Brien Trophy in the age of life when Jordan was merely a rookie. He shot only 2 of 10 from beyond the three-point line. They still advanced, making sure the league will crown a different champion for the sixth straight season.
“It was tough, man, because I couldn’t find myself, my rhythm. So I just has to trust my teammates,” he said, referring to his second-half defense on Murray. “A big shoutout to those guys. There’s more ways to win the basketball game when you’re just not an offensive player. I’m not one-dimensional. I’m not just a guy who can score. I’m a guy — whoever their best guard is, I can go lock him down. I feel like I did that on Jamal in the fourth quarter — and the third quarter — and that turned the game around. Once we really lock in on the defensive end, man, we’re a hell of a team to beat.
“I had Jamal in handcuffs.”
Before you wonder about Edwards walking into Boston’s TD Garden, where Jordan once scored 63 points in a playoff game, consider the dagger. The Nuggets seemed on their way to another conference final when the Wolves outscored them 15-1 in the third quarter. Jokic and Murray were becoming all-time players until they met their match, which left coach Michael Malone to claim they’ll return as champs. “F— being up 20. The season’s over. You don’t understand that. It’s hard. Stupid questions,” he said. “All I’m thinking about is that we’re done. For me, that hurts. For our players, that hurts. I consider the San Antonio Spurs a dynasty, and they never won back-to-back. This is just a momentary delay. It’s a failure. It’s not fatal. We’ll be back.”
Will they? When the Wolves are just getting started, once Alex Rodriguez’s oddball ownership situation is settled? “I definitely had a moment,” Towns said. “I’ve been here nine years. I’ve talked about wanting to win and doing something special here. For all the failures and the things that didn’t materialize and happen, and the disappointment that comes with it, it’s nice to have this moment to celebrate the wins.”
“I think you see how at peace and happy he is right now,” coach Chris Finch said of Towns. “He had to trust that he was never going to be marginalized. All young players always think they can do it all by themselves, but in this league, nobody can. I couldn't be more happy and proud for him. Just because I think he's faced a lot of unfair criticism when it comes to the postseason at times.”
Said Edwards: “They didn’t have no answer for Karl. Because Karl’s the baddest big on the planet.”
Wisely, when Gobert isn’t tending to his newborn son, he doesn’t watch “Inside the NBA” on TNT. Charles Barkley had demanded his hide. Not anymore. “I don’t watch those guys,” he said. “I’m glad Coach didn’t listen to his advice. It feels great. Beating a team like they are — an incredible team, a championship team, with the best player in the world — it feels good.”
Of course, Edwards knew the series was over when Gobert hit a 12-foot turnaround jumper with less than eight minutes left. “I think when Rudy hit the turnaround, I was like, ‘Yeah, we’ve probably got them.’ I know that will kill you,” he said. “Big shoutout to Big Ru. Hit the turnaround on their ass.”
The Minnesota roster was built by president Tim Connelly, who was brought in after … building the Nuggets. “It’s called luck,” he told reporters. Perhaps not, when he’s preparing his speech for the Basketball Hall of Fame.
“I mean, I think they're built to beat us,” said Jokic, who hit only 2 of 10 of his threes. “Just look at their roster. They have basically two All-Stars, two probably first-team defensive players. Mike Conley is the most underrated player in the NBA, probably. From the bench, they have a Sixth Man of the Year. They are a team that can do literally everything.”
Said Murray, suddenly not as mouthy in a series when he threw a heat pad and was fined $100,000: “Just mentally and physically, conjuring up the energy to fight like you're being hunted. I think that's the emotion now. When you're the hunter, you have so much more motivation and you grasp on to anything to prove everybody wrong and you have a constant chip on your shoulder. I don't know. I feel like we should have won tonight. That's the tough part. They beat us, but we had so many great opportunities, including myself, so it's just tough, man.”
So much for the Jokic domination. With barely a twitch in his facial movements, he makes us laugh. That he does so consistently on our basketball courts, with the coded skills of an automaton, suggests a mountainous lode of artificial intelligence. The latest crack about his raw brainpower is that he’s too smart to understand. “His IQ is off the charts. He probably belongs to Mensa,” Malone said. “He probably doesn't even know what Mensa is.”
Two games earlier, he was precious — hook shots, three-pointers, spin-o-rama moves accompanied by dunks and a funny line. “I mean, I had an open lane and I just — I'm a freak of nature,” Jokic said. “Why not show my athleticism?” Everyone was starting to acknowledge the man, and his affinity for horses, as one of only eight players to win the MVP trophy three times. He can control games as a passer unlike anyone in the post. He can score at will with an untouchable, easy gait. Even Edwards had to chuckle at one point, saying, “I just laugh. That’s all I can do. I can’t be mad. He’s good, man. He’s the MVP. He’s the best player in the NBA. He was special. I have to give him his flowers. I don’t know what we were supposed to do. Yeah, he was that guy.”
In Jokic’s world, it was nice to see him feel good. He has tried with commercials that have him bringing small horses into hotels, even poolside. “What’s funny?” he asks teammate Peyton Watson in a Hotels.com bit.
“You know, two guys and a horse, walk into a hotel,” Watson said.
“This is a pony,” said Jokic, feeding food to his pony.
But it wasn’t long ago when he appeared on a podcast with another teammate, Michael Porter Jr., and said he didn’t like being a major celebrity. “I really don’t like this life,” Jokic said. “At the end of the day, we are just basketball players. When I finish my career, I wish nobody knows me, It just feels sad,” he said. “Whenever you go to the bar, restaurant, some game, people are taking their phones out and trying to record you.”
Sad? “Being famous, I think some people like it. I don’t, really. I really wish my kid, or kids in the future, really remember me as a dad, not as a basketball player,” he said. “To not have (a) phone, I think that’s another big goal of mine, like being a normal person.”
When he receives the MVP, he never shows emotion. “I don’t know why other players cry when they get this trophy,” he said. “What I do is, I end up giving it to my horses to play with, so that brings joy in my heart.”
He won’t have to worry about the Finals MVP this time. Was he preparing the moment for Anthony Edwards? When the Ant-Man talks, as he always will, the words stick.
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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.