{"id":689375,"date":"2026-03-31T04:56:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/689375\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:56:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:56:45","slug":"nature-calls-anthony-edwards-misses-tip-off-in-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/689375\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Nature calls&#8217;: Anthony Edwards misses tip off in return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>DALLAS &#8212; Minnesota star guard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/_\/id\/4594268\/anthony-edwards\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Anthony Edwards<\/a> scored 17 points playing 23 minutes in the Timberwolves&#8217; 124-94 win over the <a href=\"http:\/\/kwese.espn.com\/nba\/team\/_\/name\/dal\/dallas-mavericks\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dallas Mavericks<\/a> on Monday night coming off the bench, though that wasn&#8217;t the original plan.<\/p>\n<p>Edwards was penciled in the starting lineup and announced to the crowd, but he was nowhere to be seen, replaced at the opening tip by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/_\/id\/3195\/mike-conley\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Conley<\/a>. Edwards finally made his way to the court and checked in 2:01 into play.<\/p>\n<p>Wolves coach Chris Finch provided the simple explanation. &#8220;Nature calls,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Mike had my back,&#8221; Edwards said with a grin.<\/p>\n<p>He said he was &#8220;miserable&#8221; sitting out, feeling &#8220;like a kid in a candy store&#8221; upon his return.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"http:\/\/kwese.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/48348943\/timberwolves-jaden-mcdaniels-week-week-knee-injury\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/r1636063_683x683_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:2\" href=\"http:\/\/kwese.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/39656620\/anthony-edwards-misses-opening-tip-lost-track\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/r1300198_819x819_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>1 Related<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ant was awesome, man,&#8221; Finch said. &#8220;His defense was outstanding. Just let the game come to him. Stayed aggressive. Made quicker decisions. And things looked kind of easy for him as a result.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Edwards, averaging a career-high 29.5 points in 35.5 minutes per game, returned after missing the previous six games with pain in his right knee.<\/p>\n<p>Edwards would need to play in all eight remaining Wolves games to be eligible for All-NBA consideration. He finished seventh in most valuable player voting in each of the last two seasons.<\/p>\n<p>Edwards has played in 58 games, but his 3 minutes, 8 seconds against Indiana on Oct. 26 don&#8217;t count toward the NBA&#8217;s records for games played.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota announced earlier Monday that power forward <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/_\/id\/4431671\/jaden-mcdaniels\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jaden McDaniels<\/a> is week-to-week after an MRI revealed left knee patella tendinopathy and a bone bruise. McDaniels, averaging a career-high 14.8 points per game, left Wednesday&#8217;s game with the injury and didn&#8217;t play Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS &#8212; Minnesota star guard Anthony Edwards scored 17 points playing 23 minutes in the Timberwolves&#8217; 124-94 win&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,166,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-689375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-dallasmavericks","12":"tag-mavericks","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116322016680108652","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}