Anthony Edwards is still only 25 years old. Up to this point in his career, he's had a ton of playoff success. He's been to two Western Conference Finals, although he has been unable to get over the hump and make it to the NBA Finals. He's still widely viewed as a young superstar, but if he fails to get over the hump again this season, he could be thrown into some ugly, unfair conversations.
At a certain point, if you fail to win an NBA Championship, you get thrown into some nasty media discussions. Guys like Luka Doncic, LeBron James, and even Jayson Tatum know this treatment too well. If you can't get the job done, people start to question you. The national media goes crazy and the conversations turn unfairly slanderous. And although Edwards has had plenty of playoff success, he hasn't won the big one.
These discussions are silly, but in today's media climate, they're somewhat inevitable. And if Edwards doesn't win a championship this season with the Minnesota Timberwolves, he's almost certainly going to start finding himself in these national media conversations.
Anthony Edwards is going to be unfairly slandered for not winning a title
The Timberwolves have gone all in. They made a big swing trade this summer to land LaMelo Ball, and they gave up a ton of draft picks in order to get the deal done.
The firsts they gave up weren't all unprotected. However, they did give up a ton of their trading flexibility moving forward. So, if this core doesn't work out, the Wolves are going to be left with very few options to fix it on the trade market. Because they don't have any picks to trade for a long time.
The Wolves have already gone through three different roster iterations to try to find a way to get Edwards a championship. None have worked out so far.
First they had Karl-Anthony Towns, and then they made a giant trade for Rudy Gobert, and when that didn't work, they traded Towns to the New York Knicks in exchange for Julius Randle.
This summer, they decided to shake it up again, sending out Randle in a trade, and then trading Naz Reid to the Charlotte Hornets in exchange for Ball.
Edwards has had a ton of opportunities to win a championship, but he has yet to get the job done. And when you get to a certain age in the NBA, conversations start transitioning from ‘young superstar’ to ‘veteran star who has yet to win the big one.’
And again, while it isn't necessarily fair to throw Edwards in those conversations considering the type of teams he's had to go up against in the West, the national media isn't always fair.
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