First off, let\u2019s not get anything twisted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anthony Edwards is the most important person in the Minnesota Timberwolves organization and the primary reason they are no longer a downtrodden franchise. He is a charismatic box office draw, genuinely generous in praise of his teammates, a diligent worker on his game in the offseason and in the process of setting up a compelling debate over whether he or Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett will eventually be regarded as the best player in Timberwolves history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A player of that much talent, prestige and power bears a disproportionate burden for his team\u2019s overall performance, a responsibility that requires a preponderance of self-accountability.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This feels like an especially propitious time, a real hinge moment, to examine the interwoven trajectories of Ant\u2019s superstardom and the team\u2019s fortunes. At age 24, he is approaching the prime of the exalted players he aspires to join \u2014 Derrick Rose won his first MVP award during his age 22 season, LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo at 24, Kevin Durant at 25, and Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander at 26. He has played in eight playoff series \u2014 first-round losses in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 postseasons, and winning two series before falling in the Western Conference Finals in both 2023-24 and 2024-25.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Wolves entered the All-Star break in sixth place in the Western Conference thus far in the 2025-26 campaign, which is where they finished the regular season a year ago. During a press conference before the team\u2019s first game back after the break against the Mavericks, head coach Chris Finch was asked by a writer from Dallas to compare this year\u2019s Timberwolves with last season\u2019s outfit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a great question,\u201d Finch replied. \u201cWe\u2019ve got pretty high internal expectations. I think if you took the temperature of the team, we\u2019d probably be a little bit disappointed. We feel we should be a little bit further ahead. We haven\u2019t been able to capitalize off our young depth as much as we thought we would at the beginning of the season. Now (with the trade for Ayo Dosunmu) we feel like we\u2019ve got bench strength. And we\u2019ve been relatively healthy. We\u2019ve just been inconsistent with our defense at times; that\u2019s hurt us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re better,\u201d Finch concluded. \u201cWe\u2019ll measure that at the end of the season. But we know what we need to be when we are a good team. And sometimes we deviate from that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Couple those comments with what Finch was asked (by Jace Frederick of the Pioneer Press) after practice a day earlier: How important is Ant\u2019s commitment to defense, especially now that the team is in the stretch run for momentum and positioning in the playoffs?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely. I mean this is 26 games, one-third of your season left. This is the time \u2014 he has the capacity to be the best two-way player in the league. And when he is playing that way we are a whole other team, defensively. So he has really got to lean in and lead us in that way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t the first time, and won\u2019t be the last, that Finch has hammered on this point. But once again, Ant isn\u2019t listening.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the first half of the first game back from the break Friday evening, Ant\u2019s defensive effort was perpetually shoddy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With 6:21<\/a> left in the first quarter, he picked up point guard Tyus Jones at midcourt. Jones, four inches shorter, 29 pounds lighter and not nearly as quick, flat out beat him off the dribble for a layup.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the 5:17<\/a> minute mark, backup point guard Brandon Williams blew past him for a floater that missed thanks to a rapid rotation from teammate Donte DiVincenzo.\u00a0<\/p>\n At 4:32<\/a>, Ant ignored his assignment of guarding Naji Marshall in the corner, enabling Marshall to receive a pass and beat him for a drive down the baseline, feeding the ball to center Marvin Bagley for a bucket after Ant\u2019s teammate Rudy Gobert left Bagley to contest Marshall\u2019s drive.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ant subbed out two minutes later, returning with 9:39 left to play in the second period. Thirty-four seconds later, Marshall dribbled down in transition, toward Ant, who had hustled back to defend. But rather than challenge the shot or simply let him go, Ant gave him a little shove just after the successful shot was released, resulting in a three-point play.\u00a0<\/p>\n With 5:24<\/a> to play in the first half, Ant ignored Caleb Martin in the corner, who cut behind him before a baseline feed for an unsuccessful layup because of Gobert\u2019s rim protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n At 3:05<\/a>, Khris Middleton put a casual spin move around Ant and banked in a floater over Gobert\u2019s shot contest.\u00a0<\/p>\n At 2:29<\/a>, Ant fails to box out Middleton, who grabs the offensive rebound and executes the putback.\u00a0<\/p>\n And for the Mavericks final offensive possession of the first half<\/a>, coach Jason Kidd cleared out one side of the half-court so that Middleton could be isolated on Ant. Middleton crab-dribbled his way down into the paint and then twirled for an uncontested six-footer that dropped through the hoop. On ESPN, color commentator Richard Jefferson remarked of Middleton, \u201cHe thought he was going to get more of a contest than he did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Related: As Timberwolves tumble into season\u2019s homestretch, consistency of effort is biggest X-factor for how far team will go<\/a><\/p>\n None of this was scandalous. The Wolves went into the halftime locker room with a 12-point lead. Dallas shot only 37.5% from the floor, and just 25% from three-point range. The Wolves were +10 in the 18:51 that Ant played and +2 in the 5:09 he sat. He poured in 20 points.<\/p>\n When Anthony Edwards is engaged on defense, the Wolve are \u2018a whole other team\u2019 <\/p>\n But that\u2019s the point. Ant courts team failure by taking plays off on defense in situations when it feels like he can get away with it. But that gnaws at the fiber of teamwork, and leads back to Finch\u2019s comments about deviating from what they know they are good at, and \u201cbeing inconsistent on defense\u201d before the All Star break, and why when Ant is engaged at that end of the floor they are \u201ca whole other team on defense.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This has been a chronic problem throughout Ant\u2019s career, but it feels especially acute this season because two trips to the conference finals have upped the stakes and expectations, because Ant is theoretically more mature in year 6, and because Ant and the team specifically pledged that this would be a point of emphasis to fix a flaw heading into this season. Instead, if anything, the problem has gotten worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n A somewhat crude but generally accurate way to measure it is to look at how many points the Wolves defense allows per 100 possessions when Ant is on the court compared with when he is off it. Through Sunday night, the team had allowed 6.6 more points per 100 possessions with Ant playing (114.4) than when he wasn\u2019t playing (107.8). That\u2019s the biggest gap of his career, with the next one being his rookie season (+6.1 more points allowed per 100 possessions) and then last season (+5.6).\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course a lot of that is mitigated by Ant\u2019s offensive prowess. The Wolves score 6.1 more points per 100 possessions with him on the court than when he is off. But the on\/off gap on defense actually gives him a negative net rating (points scored minus points allowed when playing) of -0.5, lower than everyone in the nine-player rotation except for Mike Conley.\u00a0<\/p>\n It would be absurd to claim that Ant\u2019s net rating is a measure of his value relative to his teammates. The point here is to note that a superstar universally regarded as one of the best on-ball defenders in the league underperforms chronically enough to produce those on\/off numbers, and why that is a legitimate source of concern down the stretch of the regular season and heading into the 2026 playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n An axiom of the NBA is that a team takes on the personality of its superstar. That may explain why the Wolves have beaten both of the two best teams in the West thus far this season, the Thunder and the Spurs, twice in three games, while suffering inexplicable losses and close calls to inferior competition.\u00a0<\/p>\n The inverse of Ant mailing in his defensive effort in the first half against a quasi-tanking opponent like the Mavericks is Ant rising to the occasion and elevating his game when the stakes are highest. And the good news this season is that he has honed his already phenomenal package of skills on offense to become more deliberatively effective in the clutch, game-deciding moments of mundane regular season games as well as showcase matchups and playoff tilts.\u00a0<\/p>\n And again, the first game back from the break against Dallas provides a handy example.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Wolves demonstrated that they didn\u2019t need Ant\u2019s presence to fall asleep on defense but he was vital to energizing what Finch called a \u201crusty\u201d offense in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Put simply the score went from 96-88 Timberwolves at the start of the final stanza to a tie game at 103 when Finch reinserted him with 6:55 left to play.\u00a0<\/p>\n The definition of \u201cclutch\u201d situations in the NBA is when teams are within five points of each other with five minutes or less to play in the fourth quarter and any overtime that might be required. So it didn\u2019t officially count in Ant\u2019s clutch statistics when he came down and drilled a step-back three-pointer over PJ Washington 17 seconds after checking in. But it did register as \u201cclutch\u201d when he faced down Washington again, with his now signature cat-and-mouse crossover dribble, and, instead of stepping back, put it into overdrive to get past Washington and hit a lefty floater over center Daniel Gafford with 4:49 left to play.\u00a0<\/p>\n Official \u201cclutch time\u201d bobbed and weaved the rest of the way, as Ant drove left with a fervor that promised another layup, only to stop on a dime as the defender shot past and kiss an 11-foot turnaround banker off the glass with his team up 4 and 3:05 to go. Then willed his way to the paint right in front of the rim for a soft floater from seven-feet out with his team up 6 at 2:27<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n And it wasn\u2019t \u201cclutch\u201d when he drove and stopped at the right elbow by the foul line for an 11-footer. But with the Wolves now up by eight points with 1:18 left to play, it was the dagger. The three-pointer from the left corner \u2014 points 38, 39 and 40; 20 for each half \u2014 was the cherry on top.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Ant was named one of the three finalists for clutch player of the year last season, it was hard to take it seriously. Over 160.4 minutes, he shot 56% from two-point range (28-50) and just 32.3 from behind the arc (21-65) for a composite 42.6% from the field as the Wolves went 19-23 and were -51 when he was on the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n