In hindsight, it’s a bit surprising how comfortably Anthony Edwards deferred to the NBA’s elder statesmen at the Olympics.
The brashest player in the NBA happily came off of the bench as Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant led Team USA to gold. Never mind that he’d just swept Durant out of the playoffs. He played only 13 minutes when Team USA overcame Nikola Jokić and Serbia in the semifinals. Maybe the game wouldn’t have been so close if Edwards had seen more minutes. After all, he’d just beaten Jokić in the playoffs too.
That Olympic tournament set up what essentially became the narrative of professional basketball for the next year. It was supposed to be one last ride for a legendary generation of American players, one that would set Edwards and his generational cohort up to take the torch gracefully. Instead, James partnered up with Luka Dončić, Curry got Jimmy Butler, and Kawhi Leonard, not even healthy enough to go to Paris, started to look like himself again. Suddenly, the old guys still had it.
Edwards, playing out what frequently looked like a lost season after Minnesota’s controversial Karl-Anthony Towns trade, wasn’t getting that torch peacefully. So now he’s doing it the hard way.
Julius Randle returned from a month-long absence on March 2. The Timberwolves proceeded to finish the regular season 17-4, climbing out of the play-in and into a first-round matchup with James and his new running mate, Dončić, who happened to keep him out of the Finals a year ago. Sure, what’s one more head for his mantle?
Edwards is still two games away from knocking the two of them out, but he’s been the defining player of a series featuring two far bigger stars.
Minnesota’s Game 1 victory flowed out of his improved passing. Though not quite a point guard-level playmaker yet, Edwards is getting better and better at taking what the defense gives him. The Lakers showed help against him for practically the entirety of Game 1. Edwards responded with nine assists, the catalyst for Minnesota’s monster 21-of-42 3-point shooting night.
He was more hands-on in Game 3, and it came with yet another recently-developed skill. When Edwards was drafted, his jump shot was a question mark. Five years later, he led the NBA in made 3-pointers. He tried 10 of them in Game 3, making five. Two came in the final five minutes, where every Minnesota point was either scored or assisted on by him.
It felt appropriate given the star on the other side of the game. James, like Edwards, was a shaky shooter when his career began. He, too, improved significantly with time. The last three seasons have produced three of his four best shooting seasons in terms of 3-point volume. The last two ranked fourth and second on his all-time 3-point percentage leaderboard. The major difference, though, is that James is 40 and it took him the better part of two decades to do this.
Edwards is 23. He’s added something significant several years in a row. Last year, his defense took a leap. It’s his shooting this year. As we covered in Game 1, his playmaking seems like the logical next step. The strides he’s shown in this series alone have been significant. There’s an obvious temptation here to cover what he might become, what a 23-year-old who’s advancing this quickly might be at 28 or 29. But that does an injustice to who he is right now.
He’s already swept his childhood idol. He’s already led a 20-point Game 7 comeback on the road against the best player in the world. On Friday, he took punches from maybe the greatest player ever for 43 minutes. It didn’t faze him. He was the best player on the floor for the last five. His tormentor from last postseason, admittedly dealing with an illness, was mostly helpless to watch as he did it. Edwards sought Dončić out on defense and attacked him relentlessly.
This isn’t a passing of the torch. The moment for that passed in Paris. This is a violent seizing of the torch, and Edwards — always a showman — is using it to light the Lakers on fire. He has James and Dončić on the ropes now. Game 3 was the one they had to win. We don’t know if Dončić will be feeling better on Sunday. We don’t know if 39 hours of rest is enough for a 40-year-old. James might not be himself on Sunday afternoon.
Edwards is just getting stronger. He has the advantage, and he didn’t need a blockbuster trade acquisition to get it. Minnesota traded away his best teammate. They didn’t get him a better one.
There are superstars who go their entire careers without a collection of victims like James, Dončić, Durant and Jokić. Has James Harden beaten a single player that good yet? It’s unparalleled resume-building for a player this young that didn’t enter the NBA with the advantages that, say, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird had. This isn’t supposed to happen in the superteam era. The small-market youngster on the roster everybody doubted isn’t supposed to slay giant after giant after giant.
But Edwards is doing it, and trying to put a ceiling on him at this point feels foolish. He might get his shot at Curry next round. If he makes it back to the conference finals, he’ll probably earn a date with the heavily-favored Thunder. We might not think that he’s as good as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but he certainly does. If nothing else, the presumptive MVP looks like a worthy opponent for him now. He’s beating everyone else, so, sure, why not try his luck with the 68-win juggernaut?
Edwards’ days of trying to catch the aging cohort he supported in Paris are over. He’s up there with the very best players in the world now, regardless of age. And if that wasn’t apparent after last year’s run, it should be now.
