Anthony Edwards is the breakout star of the NBA playoffs.
He dazzles with gravity-defying dunks. He oozes swagger. He’s regularly being compared to a young Michael Jordan, with side-by-side videos flooding the internet of their seemingly mirror images elevating over hapless defenders, making them look like synchronized swimmers gliding through the air.
Their similarities are obvious to everyone, with one notable exception.
“I want it to stop,” the 22-year-old Edwards told FOX Sports. “He’s the greatest of all time. I can’t be compared to him.”
But even he can’t kink the firehose.
Said Kevin Garnett: “He’s like a young ’84 Jordan.” Added Patrick Beverley: “I told him, ‘Man, you’ve got a chance, brother, to be Michael Jordan.” Posted Kendrick Perkins on X: “We are watching the Future Face of the NBA.” Chimed in Draymond Green on his podcast: “I think Anthony Edwards is poised to be that ne
Since the start of the playoffs, Edwards has generated the second-most video views across NBA social and digital platforms (100 million), trailing only LeBron James, who has long been the face of the league. He has also gained the most Instagram followers of any player since the start of the postseason, skyrocketing from 2.1 million to 2.35 million, three times more than anyone else.
The way he flies. The way he controls his body in the paint. The way he accelerates. There’s just something undeniably Jordan-esque about it.
“Obviously, they have a lot of the same mannerisms,” Timberwolves guard Mike Conley told FOX Sports. “The moves, the fadeaways, the athleticism, the poster dunks, the blocks, the defensive stuff that he does. But really, just his drive is kinda the main thing. That same kind of work ethic, that same kind of ‘I don’t sleep at all at night because I’m ready to play, I’m ready to hoop.’”
The fascinating thing about the Jordan comparisons is that they may be coincidental. Unlike Kobe Bryant, who made an art of copying Jordan’s moves and intensity, Edwards never studied him.
“He didn’t watch Jordan play,” said Justin Holland, who trained Edwards since he was 14 and is now his business partner. “It’s natural.”
Those closest to Edwards say he reminded them of Jordan long before that became part of the national narrative. To them, it’s his competitiveness that stands out most.
It’s well documented that Jordan was ruthless when it came to any competition, ranging from basketball, to cards, to golf, to even water-drinking contests. Edwards shares that same quality.
His uncle, Chris Edwards, has learned to never challenge him to anything. His brothers watched him start fights when he’d lose one-on-one competitions in their grandmother’s backyard.
One time, after losing a ping-pong game, Edwards disappeared for a few days, doing nothing but watching YouTube videos of professional ping-pong highlights and practicing.
“In about two weeks,” Holland said, “Nobody could beat him.”
So, considering the Jordan comparisons are coming from everywhere, including basketball experts and his inner circle, why does he reject them?
Is the pressure too much?
“No, no pressure,” Edwards told FOX Sports. “It’s just not possible.”
***
Edwards needed to prove his one detractor wrong.
It was a pre-draft workout back in 2020, and the ultra-competitive Edwards was hitting new heights during a series of one-on-one games with a couple of pro players.
“Ant is going so hard,” Holland said. “I mean, as if it were an overtime game on the line.”
The scene was inspired by something that happened moments earlier. Edwards heard someone trash-talk him. He stopped his individual workout. He walked downcourt. And he started playing as though it were Game 7 of the Finals.
“The other guys are playing one-on-one, but, I mean, he’s scoring back-to-back-to-back,” Holland said. “The other guy doesn’t even get a chance to get the ball.”
Afterward, Holland found out who was the instigator.
“I’m honestly thinking it’s a teenager,” Holland said. “The kid is 6 years old.”
Apparently, that kindergartner had told Edwards he couldn’t beat his daddy, something the future No. 1 draft pick took personally.
“He’s like, ‘I had to let him know,’” Holland recalled.
For Edwards, it doesn’t matter who is calling him out. If someone doubts him, he has a deep-seated need to make them choke on their words.
Really, that’s why he turned to basketball in the first place.
Edwards was a football star growing up, considered one of the top Pop Warner running backs in the country by age 10.
But Edwards’ older brother, Antony (known as Bubba), helped swivel his focus to basketball because of their ultra-competitive one-on-one games. When Anthony would lose, he’d lose it.
“He’d want to start fighting,” Bubba said. “Blows were thrown.”
Anthony decided to focus on basketball, mostly so he could beat his brother.
“I was like, forget football,” Edwards told FOX Sports. “I want to be like, Bub.”
Edwards, who is the youngest of four siblings, attributes his battles against them to also inspiring another one of his skills: trash talk.
He needed every advantage he could get. He was willing to do anything for an edge, including using his mouth to compensate for whatever skills he may have lacked at the time.
“I would say growing up in the backyard, playing 21 with my brothers, I never could win,” Edwards told FOX Sports. “So I would try to talk them out of winning. I would find a way to cheat the game. ‘Hey, let me get a free two-points right here.’ But they would never do it. So I would try to trash-talk them out of the game. It wouldn’t work. But as I got older, the better I got at trash-talking.”
Edwards is now so well-known for his verbal manipulation skills that he recently played a trash-talking foil in the movie “Hustle” alongside Adam Sandler.
If you ask Kevin Durant, he’d likely say Edwards wasn’t doing much acting.
Even though Edwards grew up idolizing the two-time NBA champion, he didn’t hesitate to try to get under his skin during their first-round playoff series. In Game 3, en route to Edwards’ 36-point, nine-rebound and five-assist performance, he talked smack to Durant following making several 3s, including one over Durant’s outstretched arms.
Durant smiled and shook his head.
And after Edwards helped eliminate the Suns last Sunday, he further twisted the knife into Durant, who will be his teammate on the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Edwards emphasized that he can’t wait to play alongside his childhood hero soon. But not for the reasons you may think.
“Talk a little trash,” Edwards said. “And let him know I sent him home.”
***
Edwards’ intensity undoubtedly conjures images of Jordan’s fire. But they also have a lot of differences.
Edwards’ family describes him as soft and sensitive.
“He wears his heart on his sleeve,” Uncle Chris said. “That’s why he don’t read [social media] comments a lot. People can be so hard on him. It gets to him more than it may show.”
You may not know that Edwards won his fifth-grade spelling bee (the winning word? Hamburger). Or that his favorite thing to do is prank people by dumping water on them and throwing snowballs in their faces. Or that he prefers to spend his evenings playing video games and eating chicken fingers rather than partying.
Within the Timberwolves organization, he’s considered coachable and a good teammate.
And while the explosion of Jordan’s skills may have been inspired by him failing to make his high school varsity basketball team, Edwards’ ascent was inspired by grief.
xt guy.”
His play this postseason has only reinforced those claims.
He averaged 31 points, including career-highs in field goal percentage (51.2%), rebounds (8) and assists (6.3) in the Timberwolves’ first-round sweep over Kevin Durant’s Phoenix Suns, the franchise’s first series win in 20 years and its only perfect one in its 34-year history.
Edwards has undeniably transformed from a two-time All-Star into a full-blown superstar, punctuated by consecutive 40-point performances over his last two games, including a postseason career-high 43 points against the Denver Nuggets in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals on Saturday.
That’s not hyperbole.
In 2015, when Edwards was 14 years old, his mother, Yvette, and grandmother, Shirley, both died from cancer within eight months of one another.
Edwards channeled all his emotions into the sport, using it as an anesthetic for his pain. In fact, the night his mother died, Anthony and Bubba threw themselves into the one thing that could distract them from their paralyzing grief.
“They went to the gym for eight hours,” Uncle Chris said. “I was sitting there in the parking lot. I left, came back. Left, came back. I came into the gym, I was like, ‘What time do y’all close?’ [The janitor] was like, ‘We close at 6, I heard what happened, and I just let them shoot.’ It was 10 p.m.”
About six months later, Edwards linked up with Holland, who was well-known in the Atlanta area for training top college prospects. As the story goes, Edwards impressed him with his positive attitude despite the cards he was dealt, not his basketball skills.
Edwards initially balked at the intensity of Holland’s workouts, but, after a little encouragement from his uncle, he began craving them, showing up seven days a week and obsessing over every detail of his game.
Edwards’ game skyrocketed.
He grew from being a scrappy player who could get five steals a game when he’d press as an elementary schooler, into a seventh grader who could dunk, into a 10th grader who starred on the Under Armour Circuit.
Bubba still remembers being wowed at that event when he took one step, faked the other way, elevated off his left leg and then made a right-handed jam over a large center.
“It was coming together,” Bubba said. “Like, OK, he’s going to be a problem.”
Edwards said basketball saved him from himself.
“Sports in general helped me stay out of a lot of trouble as a kid,” Edwards told FOX Sports. “Helped me stay out of a lot of trouble now. It’s a shoulder to cry on.”
***
Edwards isn’t trying to become the next Jordan.
He wants to be the best version of himself, whatever that might mean.
He hasn’t reached out to Jordan for advice. Or LeBron James, even though he’s being pegged as the next face of the league.
“I don’t talk to anyone,” Edwards told FOX Sports. “None. But I would say, the people around me, they keep me level-headed, like Justin [Holland], my brother [Bubba], my uncle Drew, my uncle Chris. They keep me level-headed, man. They talk s— to me all the time, tell me stuff that I need to be doing that I’m not doing right. So I think that’s pretty much all the advice I need is from the people I love.”
Edwards is currently being flanked by cameras for a Netflix documentary he’s starring in alongside a few other superstars, including James, and that’s being produced, in part, by James’ SpringHill production company.
But it hasn’t gone to his head.
Next Michael Jordan? Next face of the league? Not his focus.
“I don’t really care,” Edwards told FOX Sports. “Whoever they make the face of the league — they don’t pick me or if they pick me — it doesn’t really bother me. I’m just trying to win with my teammates. I don’t really care about being the face of the league. If my team could be the face of the league, that would be great.”
Right now, he’s obsessing over something else: Trying to get past the defending champion Nuggets.
Now that, he’ll gladly run his mouth about.
“A healthy Timberwolves team, I see us winning the championship this year,” Edwards told FOX Sports.
As for the Jordan comparisons, if anything, his inner circle believes they may be underselling Edwards’ potential.
Bubba likened Edwards to a “Create A Player” in the video game NBA2K whose skills are customized: “All his game sliders are turned up to 100.”
Added Holland: “He has an opportunity, if he can lock in and take advantage of what he’s doing, he has a chance to not only be the face of the league, but the best person to ever touch a basketball.”
As for Edwards, he’s just keeping his head down and working hard. He’s not overly concerned about his future.
So far, it has worked well for the young star.
Edwards’ family believes he doesn’t need Jordan as inspiration because his motivation comes from elsewhere.
“I feel like he’s playing so hard because he knows he’s got two of his queens watching him,” Bubba said of their mother and grandmother. “His every move, he’s trying to impress them and keep them smiling and keep them proud.”
For the last three years, Uncle Chris would cry whenever he attended his nephew’s NBA games because he was so heartbroken that Edwards’ mother wasn’t there to witness them. He recently stopped after hearing how the superstar views things.
Edwards believes his mother and grandmother never really left him. They’re just viewing him from a different vantage point.
So, whether Edwards becomes the next Jordan is irrelevant. He has more important people to impress.
“It’s a crazy feeling,” he said, “knowing that they watching from up top.”
Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.
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