Throughout history, assembling Team USA is the ultimate real-life team-up montage. It’s the rag-tag group of amateur hockey players coming together as a team to defeat the dreaded Soviets in the Miracle on Ice during the 1980 Winter Olympics. It’s the Dream Team icing out Isiah Thomas and still assembling the greatest basketball team of all time. And it’s the Mighty Ducks skating more than 43 miles across the Twin Cities to reassemble the Ducks before adding a few more pieces to take down Iceland at the Goodwill Games. Regardless of how it’s done, getting Team USA together is a big-time process.
The process was no different this time around with the FIBA World Cup roster consisting of a bunch of young, up-and-coming players in the NBA who had many question marks heading into the tournament. Most assumed this was a transition squad that would struggle in the tournament with little chance to win matching up against much more experienced teams around the world. Led by burgeoning superstar Anthony Edwards, Team USA is proving the doubters wrong with a strong showing during the exhibition slate and an easy sweep through the first round of group play.
Probably due to the youth of the squad, Team USA has a breezy, collegial vibe around it heading into the next round of the competition. They seem to genuinely enjoy playing together (except Brandon Ingram) with Anthony Edwards front and center as always. The camaraderie shown by the young team begs the question, who from this iteration of Team USA will Anthony Edwards team up with in the NBA?
Team USA is notorious for being the catalyst for many of the NBA’s biggest super teams. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh sowed the seeds that eventually became the Heatles while they were ripping throats out left and right in Beijing as part of the Redeem Team in 2008. Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant’s meet cute in 2016 led to the rise and destruction of the Brooklyn Nets when the two paired up in 2019.
Anthony Edwards seems primed for his own Gen Z team-up at some point in his career. Along with being one of the best players in the NBA, Edwards is also one of the most affable, fun-loving players in the league. Even at 22 years old, other players seem to gravitate towards him. You could say he’s already in his team-up era with Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert, but I’m going to discount it because he had no say in being drafted onto a squad with Towns already in tow. He also likely didn’t have the cache established to plead with Tim Connelly to do anything but make the Gobert trade.
So let’s come up with some definitely never-going-to-come-true Anthony Edwards team-up scenarios and pray for one thing as we get started. PLEASE GOD LET THESE PLAYERS TEAM UP IN MINNESOTA AND NOT IN MIAMI, NEW YORK, OR LOS ANGELES. AND DON’T LET THE TIMBERWOLVES MESS THIS UP AND HURT US LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO.
With that out of the way, the first order of business is to eliminate the players on Team USA who don’t quite constitute a “superstar team-up” with Edwards now or any time in the future. While Team USA is loaded with young talent, there are a few career role players who would be a nice piece to add for Edwards to build his dynasty of the future. However, they would never be considered Robin to Ant’s Batman, maybe an Alfred or one of Bruce Wayne’s rich non-superhero buddies.
That eliminates Bobby Portis, Cameron Johnson, and Josh Hart from contention. That’s not to say they’re bad players, and I wouldn’t want to see them in a Timberwolves jersey down the road. However, all three have shown what they can be in the league and that tops out at a really good role player, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The next group of castoffs makes up the “they probably won’t be superstars, but it’s too early to say for sure” group, which consists of Walker Kessler and Austin Reaves. Kessler should already have teamed up with Ant. The Wolves drafted the second-year center in 2022 before shipping him off as part of the Gobert deal.
Kessler impressed in his rookie season playing, arguably better than the three-time DPOY the Wolves traded him for. He looks like he could develop into one of the best defensive players of this next generation. But it’s still a bit too early to tell, so Walker misses out this time. Austin Reaves had a breakout season with the Los Angeles Lakers. But as much as Laker fans claim he’s going to be the next big thing, we haven’t seen enough out of him to determine if he’s going to be a star or another good player who gets his 15 minutes of fame.
The last two cross-offs are in what I like to call the “Jaden McDaniels Exclusion Zone” which simply means their services won’t be needed because McDaniels is already providing their services. McDaniels has not yet reached an agreement to extend his contract with the Timberwolves beyond this upcoming season. However, he will also never leave us because everything will be okay from now on. Mikal Bridges and Brandon Ingram are the two players who fall into the “JMEZ.” Sorry boys, but the role has already been filled.
That leaves us with four players from Team USA to daydream about one day teaming up with Anthony Edwards and leading the Timberwolves to fame and glory: Paolo Banchero, Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Haliburton, and Jaren Jackson Jr. It’s a titlating group of young starts that includes last year’s Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year, the best young passer in the game, and the Knicks’ best player since Carmelo Anthony.
Banchero is a year removed from being the somewhat surprising first pick in the 2022 NBA Draft and is coming off one of the most exciting rookie seasons in recent years. If you ever wanted to see Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony play together in their primes, this is what Edwards and Banchero could become if they both keep ascending in their early 20s.
The issue with a potential team-up between these two dynamos? Unless Banchero makes history, the Orlando Magic are likely going to offer him a rookie max extension, putting him under contract until 2031, when Edwards turns 30. That’s not to say that these two can never play together. It might just be 8-10 years down the road and edge it closer to a Kyrie/Durant early-30s situation instead of the prime 25-year-old terminator LeBron James heading to South Beach.
Jaren Jackson Jr. and Jalen Brunson both become unrestricted free agents in 2026 (Brunson has a player option for the 2025-26 season) and could team up themselves in three years. However, they set up for possible free agent targets for the Wolves to look at if and when they move on from Rudy Gobert and/or Karl-Anthony Towns. Triple J would be an intriguing big man to pair with Edwards. He’s a blend of Gobert’s defensive dominance and KAT’s offensive versatility rolled into one equally foul-prone player. Jackson has already shown what he can do paired with a dynamic young guard in Ja Morant, helping the Grizzlies reach 50-pus wins in each of the last two seasons.
Tyrese Haliburton is the most interesting option for a team-up. The Indiana Pacers’ All-Star point guard is coming off the best season of his career, averaging more than 20 points and 10 assists per game. He also signed the exact same rookie max extension that Edwards signed earlier this summer, making him an unrestricted free agent in 2029 with Edwards. If we’re looking at the stars aligning the same way for LeBron, Wade, and Bosh in 2010, an Edwards-Haliburton team-up might be destiny. Haliburton has shown to already be one of the best passers in the game three years in, and his playmaking prowess and elite three-point shooting touch (41 percent on 5.7 attempts per game over his first three years) could be the perfect backcourt partner for Edwards.
Nothing in the NBA is ever guaranteed, we can only guess as to where any of these players will end up. However, Edwards’ emergence as a star for Team USA has opened a door into a world where superstars might be willing to come to Minnesota to play alongside Edwards in the future. Or the Wolves bungle the whole thing and Edwards ends up in a bigger market. But for the first time in franchise history, the Timberwolves could field a super team borne out of Team USA.
