With 53 seconds left in Game 1 between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets, Anthony Edwards cracked a smile on the bench as he flipped his fingers together with Bones Hyland in place of a standard handshake.
It’s the type of scene Timberwolves fans have seen many times. Usually, Anthony Edwards is smiling, and his teammates are praising him after a heroic shot that secured a win. But that wasn’t the case on Saturday. Denver held an 11-point lead. Ball Arena was in a frenzy as the Nuggets were less than a minute away from a 1-0 series lead.
So why was Edwards smiling? He played 38 minutes, scored 22 points, and shot 7 of 19 from the floor and 2 of 9 from three in a losing effort. Was he content with the loss? Of course not. He was probably thinking of his team’s rebuttal, confident that he could lead them on that quest. Edwards’ track record has earned him the right to believe he can do something that could lead the Wolves to steal Game 2.
On Tuesday, he proved that to be true. But not with a late-game triple. Edwards’ heroics were much less obvious. Still, he sparked the Wolves to a 119-114 win.
Minutes in, however, it seemed highly unlikely that Minnesota would be able to count on Edwards to lead a winning charge in any capacity. His right knee knocked with Nikola Jokic’s left knee at the half-court line. Edwards slipped slightly right after and grabbed his knee in pain, hobbled on that possession.
He missed 11 of Minnesota’s final 14 games with Patellofemoral pain syndrome, “runner’s knee” in his right knee. Not only did that leave Edwards entering Game 1 underconditioned, but he was also clearly feeling the lingering pain from that knee injury.
The Wolves didn’t stay composed in Game 1. They looked far too much like the immature team they were in the regular season and didn’t have Edwards’ heroics — a 10-point scoring boomlet or a string of trips to the free throw line — to bail them out.
Usually, that’s how Anthony Edwards shows off his greatness: by completing all the plays that end up on social media feeds the next morning. And for a Wolves team that is operating with a thin margin for error, they desperately missed his equalizing presence in Game 1.
Therefore, while Edwards was moving very slowly early on in Game 2, Minnesota’s chances of evening up the series at 1-1 were already looking grim.
Denver built a 39-25 lead after the first quarter by shooting 12 of 18 (66.7%) from the floor and completing three 4-point plays. Edwards scored 7 points in the frame but shot 2 of 6 from the floor and was a -14 in 10 minutes.
Much like he did in Game 1, Anthony Edwards was settling for mid-range jumpers and 3-point hoists in the first quarter, and his teammates were following suit.
Minnesota’s offensive production was troubling in the first quarter. Not just because the ball and player movement were stagnant, but because the Wolves were unable — and unwilling — to attack the rim, which is step one in breaking Denver’s defense.
The Nuggets ranked 21st in defensive rating this season and 28th in opponent rim field goal percentage (70.6%). Jokić and Jonas Valančiūnas are not rim protectors, and teams usually try to exploit that. However, in Game 1, Minnesota scored 25 paint points, half of its regular-season average (50.3).
Edwards, in particular, settled for jumpshots frequently in Game 1. He shot 4 of 5 at the rim and 3 of 14 from everywhere else on the court. The Wolves didn’t make Denver’s defense work hard enough, and it didn’t look like Edwards was healthy enough to change that. That remained true early on in Game 2.
But then something switched.
With 9:06 left until halftime, Rudy Gobert picked up his third foul. Julius Randle replaced him, and the Wolves went small. They switched to a five-out look on offense, which opened up the paint, allowing Edwards to get downhill.
In the second quarter, Edwards scored 13 points on 4 of 7 shooting. He flashed by defenders, converted two layups, and drilled one of those step-back threes.
Ant was back, and not a second too late.
“He was awesome, man,” Chris Finch said postgame. “He was unbelievable. I think also, in that period where we were down, he was great on the bench. Great leadership. … He recognized he needed to get into attack mode and get downhill a little bit more. He got off the ball when they put two on him … I thought he was outstanding tonight in his floor game.”
Minnesota essentially lost Game 1 in the second quarter. In Game 2, they rather miraculously gave themselves a chance to win in the second quarter, outscoring Denver 39-25 on 14 of 20 (70%) shooting and 8 of 11 (72.7%) from 2-point range.
The Wolves didn’t flip the game by simply getting hot; they did it by following Edwards’ lead and breaking Denver’s subpar defense by getting to the rim.
“Go at Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders,” Jaden McDaniels, who finished with 14 points on 7 of 15 shooting, said postgame. “Tim Hardaway, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, their whole team … Yeah, they’re all bad defenders.”
Minnesota scored 53 paint points in Game 2, and Donte DiVincenzo capped it off with a forceful two-handed slam to seal the win. Usually, that is the type of play that Edwards is orchestrating — a heroic bucket during a clutch-time takeover.
However, that wasn’t how his performance went on Tuesday.
Anthony Edwards went scoreless in the clutch, missing two shots and shooting 1 of 4 overall in 8:52 fourth-quarter minutes. He committed a turnover in the final moments that could have been costly.
By Edwards’ standards, his 30-point, 10-rebound, 2-assist statline on .40/.27.3/.80 spits weren’t heroic. It’s actually much worse than what he is capable of doing at his best. But he wasn’t at his best in Game 2. Edwards’ right knee was handicapping him from the start. But he battled. He backed his confident smile after Game 1 with an effort that sparked Minnesota to find its offensive identity by attacking the rim.
“I feel good,” Edwards said on the NBC broadcast postgame. “It’s been like a month and a half since I played basketball. It’s like my second game. So just trying to get my legs on him and get my win back. I feel good.”
Now, the Wolves head back to Minneapolis for Game 3 on Thursday with a brand-new series. They discovered their best offensive plan, and their leader found a groove.
