Minnesota reporter speculates how Team USA experience may change Anthony Edwards

Anthony Edwards' trajectory has just continued to go up, up, up over the course of his four-year career. In continuing to improve and grow in multiple ways, Ant has helped the Minnesota Timberwolves become an absolute juggernaut in the Western Conference.

This is apparent to anyone who has been paying the slightest amount of attention to his career. And of course, when we want to get insight on what Edwards' next steps could look like, it will always make sense to go to the people who have spent the most time around him in the last several years.

One of those people is Chris Hine, Timberwolves Beat Reporter for the Minnesota Star Tribune. Hine appeared on the Dane Moore NBA Podcast on Thursday to provide some context behind Ant's growth and give a hint as to what could be next.

Chris explained exactly how the Team USA experience has affected Anthony Edwards. "The way that people have motivated Ant in the past is by telling him that 'Dwyane Wade used to do this,'" Hine said. "or 'Dwyane Wade didn't do this,' or 'James Harden used to do this,' or 'Kawhi did this.'"

Ant's experience with NBA legends could change his approach

Clearly, Edwards takes a lot of motivation from the greats and wants to mimic their habits to induce greatness in himself as well. Hine's theory is that Ant's approach could change in a big way after he spent multiple weeks around future Hall-of-Fame players at the Olympics.

"I'm very curious now that he has had this Olympic experience," said Hine. "That no longer has he just heard about what the greats of the game do in terms of their routines, their work ethic, how they take care of their body, their professionalism, things like that. I'm very curious, now that he's actually seen it up close with Team USA, how that is going to affect how he prepares, how he works, what his mentality is moving forward."

It certainly seems that Chris could be on to something here. We already saw the kind of season Ant put up in the 2023-24 season, and that came on the heels of a 2023 World Cup experience that Edwards explained had a major impact on him and how he approached things from a mental aspect.

"No longer are people just telling him 'hey, this is what LeBron did,' or this is what Steph does,'" Hine said. "Now, it's 'okay, I've seen how LeBron works, I've seen how Steph works, I've seen how KD works up close,' and what kind of a lasting effect that's going to have overall from all sorts of different angles."

Timberwolves fans have to be absolutely thrilled at this realization. We know how impressionable Edwards is, and how motivated he is to be great and to become like the past legends he looks up to. There is plenty of reason to think he will come into this next NBA season even more fired up and with even more transformative habits in his routine.