Anthony Edwards - Greatest Timberwolf

[Wolvesfan21]

It's a mistake to try to build your franchise around Ant. That's becoming really obvious.

Randle. They played Randle like he was the man last night and only he and NAW really put in any real effort.

Ant and Rudy played like chumps. Ant needs to become the lead dog every night. He should be scoring 30+ every other game.

[Wolvesfan21]

What is this based on?

He does not like he has had sex and has impregnated multiple woman

Ha, that could be part of it! I don’t want to speak for Cool, but I think there’s much more to his concerns…and mine. He’s admittedly still young, but there are troubling signs that he is more about the NBA lifestyle than winning. There are dozens of ultra talented guys who never reached their potential because of their heads. Someday we will look back and know who Ant is…will it be Steph Curry, or will it be Ja Morant? It could go either way, but I know which I would prefer.

Admittedly I know VERY little about Morants story. But I'll add in my 2 cents.

Is it really that much different to be posting with guns in your hands as a black man versus say an old white guy who hunts and has shotguns? Now one is used "more so" for hunting while the other primarily self defense. So yes I see the difference.

But it is interesting how an old white guy doesn't get "cancelled" for showing off guns versus a young rich black NBA star.

(yes I am probably missing a ton of the story as I generally don't care about Morant and avoided finding anything out about it, I just have no problem at all if he's on video shooting guns)

[Lipoli390]

It's a mistake to try to build your franchise around Ant. That's becoming really obvious.

I disagree, Cool. This organization has repeatedly failed to build effectively aground their best player one era after another. They failed with KG, with Kevin Love, with KAT and now they’re failing with Ant. We had the third best record in the West last season with Ant and KAT. Then this organization moves KAT because of the salary situation they put themselves in by making the Rudy deal.

The Bulls had MJ but weren’t successful until they surrounded him with the right players. They traded for the draft rights to Pippen to give MJ another ball-handling versatile scorer. They drafted Horace Grant to provide rebounding, toughness and scoring. They made sure they had elite perimeter shooters like Paxon and then Kerr along side MJ. The Lakers acquired Shaq to help Kobe. Miami brought in Shaq to pair with Wade and later brought in both LeBron and Bosh to pair with him. The current Celtics drafted Brown to pair with Tatum.

This isn’t about Ant. He’s no MJ but he can be our Kobe or Wade. He’s still a work in progress, but this organization hasn’t -given him stability or surrounded him with the players who optimize his abilities. This is an organizational failure as it always has been in prior eras when we had a great player but failed to surround that player with the right personnel to make it all work.

[AbeVigodaLive]

It's a mistake to try to build your franchise around Ant. That's becoming really obvious.

I disagree, Cool. This organization has repeatedly failed to build effectively aground their best player one era after another. They failed with KG, with Kevin Love, with KAT and now they’re failing with Ant. We had the third best record in the West last season with Ant and KAT. Then this organization moves KAT because of the salary situation they put themselves in by making the Rudy deal. The Bulls had MJ but weren’t successful until they surrounded him with the right players. They traded for the draft rights to Pippen to give MJ another ball-handling versatile scorer. They drafted Horace Grant to provide rebounding, toughness and scoring. They made sure they had elite perimeter shooters like Paxon and then Kerr along side MJ. The Lakers acquired Shaq to help Kobe. Miami brought in Shaq to pair with Wade and later brought in both LeBron and Bosh to pair with him. The current Celtics drafted Brown to pair with Tatum.

This isn’t about Ant. He’s no MJ but he can be our Kobe or Wade. He’s still a work in progress, but this organization hasn’t -given him stability or surrounded him with the players who optimize his abilities. This is an organizational failure as he always has been in prior eras when we have a great player but failure to surround that player with the right team to make it all work.

Case in point... Kevin Garnett.

What was clear to many... was not clear to the Timberwolves. They never really found the type of player necessary to get the most out of Garnett and more importantly... the team.

One year of Cassell. What a waste of Garnett.

____________________________

As for Ja Morant. His dumb/immature actions cost his team a season... along with a lot of injuries. But, is anyone actually writing him off? He might not be Curry, but very few in NBA history can say they're even close to Curry.

For what it's worth, Memphis is back to the #2 seed in the West this season.

[Q-is-here]

I have to side with Lip and Abe on this one. I think the criticism of Ant is fair and he certainly is no Jokic or Doncic or Curry, but damn, it's tough finding guys with his set of skills and physical characteristics. He's the hand the franchise has been dealt and they need to do everything possible to build around him.

I also don't think the organization has failed Ant. I'd give the organization a B or B+ so far.

Over the course of his first four seasons, he's played in 27 playoff games and made the Western Conference Finals. Let's see how other top tier players fared in their first four seasons with their teams:

Anthony Edwards - 27 playoff games, made the WCF in his fourth season.
Nikola Jokic - Missed playoffs first three seasons, 14 playoff games in 4th season, knocked out in Conf Semis.
Giannis - 12 playoff games, never got out of the first round.
Steph Curry - Missed playoffs first three seasons, 12 playoff games in his fourth season, knocked out in Conf Semis.
Doncic - 28 playoff games, made WCF in his fourth season.
Anthony Davis - 4 playoff games, knocked out in first round.
Michael Jordan - 20 playoff games, never got further than the Conf Semis

So of this group, Ant and Doncic are the only ones to have played more than 20 playoff games by the end of their 4th season and get as far as the Conference Finals.

It's now up to the front office to pivot (ha!) and make the moves needed to elevate and feature Ant. It's absurd how Randle-centric this team is right now.

[Lipoli390]

Q -

I think a B is a fair grade and you’ve provided the comparative stats to back it up. But I’d probably give the current regime a C+ because of what they’ve done with the great hand they were dealt coming in. They inherited a 46-win team with a very young talented tandem of Ant and Jaden as well as KAT in his prime coming off probably his best overall season from a team standpoint. We had lots of very tradable players and picks that should have been used more strategically and judiciously to build around what we had.

The Rudy gambit was simply reckless in my view. It was unnecessary and was a poor use of the assets and foundation we had at the time. It looked like an attempt to build around KAT. As I saw it at the time, we needed to build around Ant and Jaden. I believed that KAT could be a major part of building a contender around those two based on the results the season before the Rudy deal when we won 46 games when Ant and Jaden were barely 19 and 20 years old. If we were going to do something big back then the thing to do was what Cool was advocating for - namely trading KAT. I didn’t want to trade KAT at the time, but we could have gotten a lot in return for him and the return might have been a better long-term fit for building around Ant and Jaden. The point is that the organization took their eyes off the ball. The ball was Ant (and maybe Jaden too) playing in a fast space-and-pace aggressive style. If adding rim protection was important, we had just drafted Kessler and there were always going to be defensive or rim-protecting bigs available as free agents or for pretty minimal trade assets.

And so here we are, two games over .500 and featuring Julius Randle on offense. I think an effective pivot is possible. I’m not smart enough to figure out how we do it so I’m counting on TC to make it happen. I like Minott and I like TSJ’s potential. Both are ready to contribute if given the chance in my view. I don’t share Abe’s negative view of Dilly, but I have to agree that Dilly has a long way to go. I think the things that seem to suggest a low basketball IQ are simply reflections of his youth and an overall dysfunctional offense. I’m concerned about his lack of size, but seeing the success of players like Mike Conley, Ja Morant and Trae Young convinces me that Dilly can become a terrific PG in spite of his size. Hopefully, Abe will turn out to be wrong about Dilly’s basketball IQ.

[FNG]

One thing we can all agree on...we would all be happy if Ant lived up to his enormous ceiling and became a consistent winner. I know I would. And I think we can all agree that Ant has an endearing personality that makes him fun to watch and cheer for. That's why he has quickly become a contender for (and I hate this expression) "the face of the NBA"...my God, just look at his frequency on commercials.

And I also think that Ant will always be a guy who will put up terrific stats. But the more I watch him, the more skeptical I am that he will ever be the kind of guy who can lead a team to a championship. There have been some greats mentioned in this thread...Wade, Kobe, MJ, AD, Jokic, Curry, etc. All with talent similar to Ant's, and also proven winners. Now close your eyes and imagine them on the court when they were 23. Can you imagine any one of them hugging Draymond Green after missing 5 shots in the final minutes that resulted in a loss? I can't. Any one of those guys would have been so pissed after such a finish that the last thing on their mind would have been hugging an opponent with a big smile on their face. And that's what I fear Ant lacks: gravitas. The greats had it, and 23 year old Ant doesn't. He showed us that in the Laker and Warrior losses...he seemed much more interested in hanging around with and impressing his Olympic teammates than doing what was necessary to win the game. The list of players with Ant's talent who never made it is long. Michael Beasley is a great example. Immense talent and a fun guy prone to say whacky things...sound familiar? Watching him in college, I would have predicted he would be a top 10 all-time player. But like Ant, he seemed to lack that gravitas that the great ones have.

I so much want to be wrong here, and I admit that there are games where I start to think he could be like some of the guys we talk about in this thread. But every third game or so, I find myself with the same doubts. I'm a fan of selling high, and as many have pointed out, we didn't do that with KAT. Will Ant's rep ever be better than it is right now? But realistically TC probably can't even consider trading him, even if the return was Rudy-like. I'll continue to hope Ant proves me wrong.

[guest81]

One thing we can all agree on...we would all be happy if Ant lived up to his enormous ceiling and became a consistent winner. I know I would. And I think we can all agree that Ant has an endearing personality that makes him fun to watch and cheer for. That's why he has quickly become a contender for (and I hate this expression) "the face of the NBA"...my God, just look at his frequency on commercials.

And I also think that Ant will always be a guy who will put up terrific stats. But the more I watch him, the more skeptical I am that he will ever be the kind of guy who can lead a team to a championship. There have been some greats mentioned in this thread...Wade, Kobe, MJ, AD, Jokic, Curry, etc. All with talent similar to Ant's, and also proven winners. Now close your eyes and imagine them on the court when they were 23. Can you imagine any one of them hugging Draymond Green after missing 5 shots in the final minutes that resulted in a loss? I can't. Any one of those guys would have been so pissed after such a finish that the last thing on their mind would have been hugging an opponent with a big smile on their face. And that's what I fear Ant lacks: gravitas. The greats had it, and 23 year old Ant doesn't. He showed us that in the Laker and Warrior losses...he seemed much more interested in hanging around with and impressing his Olympic teammates than doing what was necessary to win the game. The list of players with Ant's talent who never made it is long. Michael Beasley is a great example. Immense talent and a fun guy prone to say whacky things...sound familiar? Watching him in college, I would have predicted he would be a top 10 all-time player. But like Ant, he seemed to lack that gravitas that the great ones have.

I so much want to be wrong here, and I admit that there are games where I start to think he could be like some of the guys we talk about in this thread. But every third game or so, I find myself with the same doubts. I'm a fan of selling high, and as many have pointed out, we didn't do that with KAT. Will Ant's rep ever be better than it is right now? But realistically TC probably can't even consider trading him, even if the return was Rudy-like. I'll continue to hope Ant proves me wrong.

I mean ant has been a consistent winner in his career based on anything you want to use. Hes won more games every year and has advanced further in the playoffs every year. His numbers raise dramatically from the playoffsfrom the regular season

[Wolvesfan21]

One thing we can all agree on...we would all be happy if Ant lived up to his enormous ceiling and became a consistent winner. I know I would. And I think we can all agree that Ant has an endearing personality that makes him fun to watch and cheer for. That's why he has quickly become a contender for (and I hate this expression) "the face of the NBA"...my God, just look at his frequency on commercials.

And I also think that Ant will always be a guy who will put up terrific stats. But the more I watch him, the more skeptical I am that he will ever be the kind of guy who can lead a team to a championship. There have been some greats mentioned in this thread...Wade, Kobe, MJ, AD, Jokic, Curry, etc. All with talent similar to Ant's, and also proven winners. Now close your eyes and imagine them on the court when they were 23. Can you imagine any one of them hugging Draymond Green after missing 5 shots in the final minutes that resulted in a loss? I can't. Any one of those guys would have been so pissed after such a finish that the last thing on their mind would have been hugging an opponent with a big smile on their face. And that's what I fear Ant lacks: gravitas. The greats had it, and 23 year old Ant doesn't. He showed us that in the Laker and Warrior losses...he seemed much more interested in hanging around with and impressing his Olympic teammates than doing what was necessary to win the game. The list of players with Ant's talent who never made it is long. Michael Beasley is a great example. Immense talent and a fun guy prone to say whacky things...sound familiar? Watching him in college, I would have predicted he would be a top 10 all-time player. But like Ant, he seemed to lack that gravitas that the great ones have.

I so much want to be wrong here, and I admit that there are games where I start to think he could be like some of the guys we talk about in this thread. But every third game or so, I find myself with the same doubts. I'm a fan of selling high, and as many have pointed out, we didn't do that with KAT. Will Ant's rep ever be better than it is right now? But realistically TC probably can't even consider trading him, even if the return was Rudy-like. I'll continue to hope Ant proves me wrong.

If Jordans mental game is a 10, Bease was a 2. Ant is at least in the 8 range as we've at least seen a great fire for many regular season games. I don't like the comparison.

Ant does take some regular season games pretty lightly though, especially in the first halves. This game was a unique one though with his buddy coming back, kind of a special circumstance.

Imagine (it would never happen) but if the Wolves faced the Knicks in the Finals. You're not seeing Ant take the game lightly because his buddy is on the other team. Im not that concerned about it. Even though I at the same time am not a fan of it.

[Coolbreeze44]

It's a mistake to try to build your franchise around Ant. That's becoming really obvious.

What is this based on?

His IQ