From the year he entered the league, putting Yuta Watanabe on a poster before a month later exploding for a 42-point haul against the Suns, Anthony Edwards has always been special.
How special?
Special enough to warrant Minnesota using its first overall pick in the 2020 draft to select the Georgia guard, with the kind of tantalising combination of athleticism and playmaking to transform a franchise.
And that goes without even mentioning his personality which Tom Crean, Edwards’ coach at Georgia, described as “infectious”.
He’s a pied piper personality,” Crean told The Athletic in 2020.
“People gravitate to him. They want to be around him and people really want him to like them. It’s a tremendous aura for a 19-year-old.”
Some people have a quiet confidence in the way they go about things. Anthony Edwards is not one of them.
There is nothing quiet about the way he operates. Nothing quiet about the way he dunked on Watanabe as a rookie, or the way he trash talked Kevin Durant after hitting a 3-pointer over the Suns superstar as Minnesota won Game 1 and went on to sweep the Phoenix series.
Edwards averaged 31 points, 8.0 rebounds, 6.3 assists and 2.0 steals in that series and Durant said after Game 4 that the 22-year-old was his “favourite player to watch”.
“[He has] just grown so much since he came into the league,” added Durant.
“His love for the game shines bright. That’s one of the reasons I like him the most. Love everything about Ant.”
He is one of those players who makes it hard not to like them and now Edwards is rapidly rising towards superstardom after helping take Minnesota to the Western Conference Finals.
Like Edwards, there was nothing quiet about the way the Timberwolves took it to the defending champion Nuggets, claiming the opening two games on the road before obliterating Denver by 45 points in Game 6 and clinching the series with a historic second-half comeback.
