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A voice whispered to Anthony Edwards all summer long.
He heard it while he was running the stairs at an empty Target Field, the beautiful baseball park right next door to where he holds court for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He heard it while he was in the gym, putting up thousands of shots per week to hone his craft. He heard it as he watched film of the last two Western Conference finals, where both times his Wolves ran into superstars who had counters for every punch thrown at them.
The voice told him the truth. It told him what Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving were for the Dallas Mavericks in 2024. It told him what Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was for Oklahoma City last May. It told him what he has not yet become.
“Unstoppable,” Edwards told The Athletic. “As long as I can get to that point, I’m good.”
As he prepares to enter his sixth season in the league, Edwards has no interest in celebrating his All-Star appearances, his shoe deals or his movie roles. He has led the league in 3-pointers made, become one of the most vicious in-game dunkers of his era and has led what was a perpetually losing franchise to back-to-back Western Conference finals. He doesn’t listen to the comparisons to Michael Jordan of which he wants no part.
Instead, he listens to the voice that wants more. That’s what he wants to hear. When he is asked what he wants from this game, excluding the obvious answer of a championship, Edwards lights up.
“All I want them to say is we couldn’t guard him,” he said. “We. Could. Not. Guard. Shawty.”
That Edwards does not believe he has reached that level yet is notable in and of itself. He might be the most naturally confident player in this league, the great white shark in the NBA’s ocean of ego.
Edwards is the one who told Barack Obama, to his face, to “stand down” as he stood in a room with the former president, LeBron James and Steph Curry and matter-of-factly proclaimed, “I’m the truth.” He is the one who sat in the locker room after watching two-time MVP Nikola Jokić put up a 61-point triple-double against him and said, “he might be the best basketball player I’ve ever seen close up. … Besides myself.” Edwards is the one who called himself “Black Jesus.” In his second season in the league.
There are enough hot coals in his stove of belief to warm all of Target Center in the dead of January, but that won’t be enough to get the Wolves to make the final step.
“He’s gotten to the Western Conference finals twice, which is hard to do. But he’s lost the same way,” said Wolves assistant Chris Hines, one of Edwards’ closest confidantes in the organization. “At some point, you have to take it a step forward. At some point, you have to look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘What do I need to do to get it?’”
This is not a selfish pursuit. He looks at the landscape of the league, how super teams are giving way to smartly constructed rosters with a go-to guy in the middle and a stellar cast around them. He knows that a universe is only as viable as the strength of the star around which everything else orbits. The way Edwards sees it, he hasn’t been good enough, on either end of the court, in the last two conference finals.
“We ain’t going to get to the finals without going through Luka or Shai,” Edwards said. “I just gotta keep getting better. That’s the main thing.”
The tacit acknowledgement that he’s not there yet is another sign of growth. To him, becoming unstoppable gives him the best chance to help his team reach heights it has never reached. Deep down, he hasn’t felt truly unstoppable since he used to put on pads and a helmet under the blazing Atlanta sun all those years ago.
For someone who plays the game with as much joy and spirit as Edwards does, it is always surprising to see the sparkle in his eye when he talks about the one that got away.
“Everybody knows football was my first love,” Edwards said.
As a kid growing up in the rough-and-tumble Oakland City section of Southwest Atlanta, Edwards was a star from the moment he set foot on the gridiron. His combination of size, speed and power, even as an 8- or 9-year-old made him too much to handle for other kids his age.
“They were like a one-man band and they thought that they could give Ant the ball and everybody can get out of the way,” said Dana Watkins, one of Edwards’ youth coaches. “He was enough to carry them.”
From Watkins’ viewpoint, that was part of the problem. Football was too easy for Edwards. When he joined a higher level team, serendipitously called the Vikings, he hated the extra conditioning and practicing that the coaches demanded of him.
“He was just really lazy because he was so used to just getting over just because he was so much more physical and so much bigger than most kids,” Watkins said.
Edwards’ mother, Yvette, gave the hard-charging football coaches her blessing to ride Anthony in an effort to instill some sense of work ethic in him. If Anthony refused to do conditioning, his coaches made his teammates do the running for him. Sometimes the peer pressure worked, sometimes it didn’t.
“Football came second-nature to me. I didn’t have to work out for football,” Edwards said. “Even if I had to play in the NFL right now, I wouldn’t have to do too much work on my game. It would be more just working on my body.”
He suffered an ankle injury in middle school that knocked him out for a bit and opened the door for him to focus more on basketball, to follow in his big brother’s footsteps. When Edwards turned to hoops, the size advantage disappeared with a quickness.
“In basketball, he wasn’t head and shoulders taller than everybody else,” Watkins said. “He was just an average-sized kid on our team.”
Without the physical superiority, Edwards had to find another way to excel. He was behind several bigger, more skilled teammates, so he had to practice in a way that he never had to with football.
“Basketball, I really had to work to develop myself,” he said. “I couldn’t shoot the ball well. I couldn’t dribble that well.”
Edwards did not take kindly to being average. The same kid who refused to do conditioning in football started working at all hours of the day on basketball. He would get up early in the morning for workouts before school, get shots up during the day when he had a free period from class and keep working well into the evening to try to make himself into more than just an athlete in sneakers.
“I was a good defender and I was a good athlete. Everything else that I got, I really worked at it because I wasn’t that good at it before,” he said. “I think that’s why I’m never content with where I’m at. I know there’s always something I can do better.”
Underneath all of that bravado, the fear of not measuring up pushes Edwards forward. Every summer of his professional career has brought with it a significant advancement in his skill set. Whether it was on-ball defense, offensive efficiency or 3-point shooting, Edwards keeps adding to his game because he knows that there are still holes to fill and other players ahead of him on the pecking order.
“I ain’t really chasing them. I’m competing against them,” Edwards said. “I’m trying to win against them.”
It drove him all summer long.
“I saw a true obsessiveness to detail. How to get to spots, why he’s there, what to read,” Hines said. “His intensity was insane just in terms of being relentless, wanting to be in the gym, wanting to learn more, wanting to study some guys. It was probably one of his best summers he’s had.”
Edwards and the Timberwolves had home-court advantage and the No. 1 defense in the league when they met the Mavericks in the conference finals in 2024. None of that mattered. Irving and Dončić scored at all three levels — at the rim, in the midrange and behind the 3-point line — and rolled past the Wolves in five games.
It was more of the same last season, when Minnesota stormed into the conference finals after needing just 10 total games to dismiss the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors in the first two rounds. Gilgeous-Alexander shot a paltry 31.8 percent from deep in the series, but his dizzying array of moves and tricks allowed him to get to his spots at will. Did he get a few favorable whistles? Maybe. But the MVP’s dominance was so complete that it rendered those complaints moot. Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 31.4 points per game and the Thunder loaded up on Edwards, hounding his 3-ball (he shot 28 percent) and closing off his driving lanes to limit his impact.
The Wolves tried the same approach against OKC. That didn’t matter to Gilgeous-Alexander or Jalen Williams, both of whom treated the analytical No Man’s Land outside the paint and beneath the 3-point line like it was their own personal playground.
“Those (guys) was cookin’ us in the midrange,” Edwards said.
When the series was over, Edwards was not crestfallen. He was only 23, after all, and he had just gained even more clarity on what needed to be done.
When they lost to the Mavericks in ’24, the enduring image was Dončić drilling a stepback over Rudy Gobert in Game 2 and then burying the Wolves in Game 5 under an avalanche of deep 3s. So Edwards spent all summer working on his 3-point shot and turned himself into one of the best long-range shooters in the league.
His reaction to the OKC loss confused some observers who were used to seeing star players seethe and sulk under a defeat so complete. Edwards gave the Thunder their props, but also stepped into the offseason as if he just received the answers to the test.
“We got our ass kicked all around the board,” he said. “I think we’re going to be pretty good this year.”
After SGA and Williams strafed the Wolves from the midrange and post, Edwards went back into the lab again, focusing on his intermediate game as a way to make it more difficult to take him out of a game the way the Thunder did.
The difference Hines saw in Edwards this summer was how his focus shifted, ever so slightly. Long hours in the gym were nothing new to him. Adding to his game is something to expect, not celebrate. But he saw another layer of motivation.
“I think he’s looking at the Shais, the Lukas and these guys having success. (Jayson) Tatum,” Hines said. “He wants to be there, too. He wants his name in the same room as those guys, and beyond that.”
Wolves coach Chris Finch has been in Minnesota for all but the first four months of Edwards’ career. He sees two types of confidence in the NBA.
“Ant’s (confidence) is rooted in the security of knowing who you are and that I’m going to figure it out,” Finch said. “I may not know it yet, but I’m going to figure this whole thing out. Versus the one that’s rooted in insecurity where you just say things hoping to speak them into existence while you’re covering up self-doubt. That’s not him.”
Now the question becomes how will he apply what he has worked on this summer. The modern game almost demands that a high-level scorer emphasizes 3-point shooting and rim attacks. Edwards does not figure to reinvent his game after averaging 27.6 points and shooting 39.5 percent on 10 3s per game. Last season, he shot a ghastly 36 percent on 2-pointers outside of the paint, so he has a long way to go to become proficient enough in the midrange to merit a noticeable increase in percentage of his shot diet.
“It will definitely be a part of what we want to do this year, as an accent, not the main thing of course,” Finch said. “But we feel like it’s a good way to take advantage of him, and he’s done a good job of adding that to his game.”
Edwards said he spoke to Michael Jordan about leaning back with his shoulders to put pressure on the defense in the post versus pushing with his backside, something that would allow him a better base with which to get to his fall-away jumper. He searched for repeatable moves to go to late in games after the Wolves struggled mightily in the clutch during the regular season last year, often falling on a missed stepback 3 from Edwards.
“He has to play chess and not play checkers,” Hines said. “That’s how you become unstoppable. I told him, ‘I’ll sharpen every tool in your toolbox. You have to pick the right ones to utilize at the right time.’”
The challenges are coming from within as well.
The night before the Timberwolves opened training camp last month, the team gathered for a dinner at 6Smith, a trendy restaurant that sits on the shores of Lake Minnetonka. Mike Conley, the veteran point guard and chief message deliverer, looked Edwards right in the eyes.
There have been too many times in the past when he loses his focus on defense. Conley wants that to end.
“You want to win a championship, we expect you to guard like you’re a top-five perimeter defender in the league, which we believe you are,” Conley told him.
Wolves owner Alex Rodriguez, who knows something about being the No. 1 pick and carrying the burdens of stardom, will text with Edwards about what it takes to win a title.
“He has his own vision. He wants to be one of the greatest of all time, but he doesn’t want to be a social media star,” Rodriguez said. “He wants to be Jordan-esque, Larry Bird-esque, Magic Johnson-esque. And he knows the responsibility he has on his shoulders to put people around him.”
Gobert is pushing him to take better care of his body after watching Edwards wear down some in the last two playoff runs. The Wolves are asking him to be great on both ends of the floor, and Gobert is taking heart in the leaner, more toned version of Edwards he has seen this fall.
“I’ve been on his ass for a few years, but it’s fun to see that,” Gobert said. “That, to me, is clear maturity.”
Edwards has been challenging his teammates, too. He pressed them to spend as much time in Minnesota as possible this summer, sweating through workouts in the practice facility to strengthen the bond they will need to survive in the West.
“He’s ready to win. I think that’s the most important,” said Naz Reid, who has been teammates with Edwards for all five of his seasons.
“Obviously, his stats are one thing, and individual accolades are one thing. But I think he’s been more about team, and that’s one of the biggest growth areas for me.”
Edwards turned 24 in August. Jordan won his first MVP in his age-24 season. Kobe Bryant was First Team All-NBA at 24. Dončić was in the finals that season.
“I know that s— would be so fun for Minnesota. I already know,” he says, pondering what a championship would mean to the state that has become his second home. “That’s why I be trying to do it. … Don’t worry about it. I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to get fly as hell to where they can’t stop me.”
The confidence Ant built in football could only take him so far. It derived from God-given physical prowess. The confidence he has in basketball, to him, feels stronger because he has had to work for it. He had to earn it.
Now it’s time to see how far that belief can take him and the Timberwolves, to see how unstoppable he can become. Now that voice needs to do more than whisper. Now it needs to howl.
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Jon Krawczynski is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Minnesota Timberwolves, the NBA and the Minnesota Vikings. Jon joined The Athletic after 16 years at The Associated Press, where he covered three Olympics, three NBA Finals, two Ryder Cups and the 2009 NFC Championship Game. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonKrawczynski