The Future is Bright, But One Man Shines Brighter
On February 8th, 2012, Carmelo Anthony torched the Nigerian national team with a 37-point performance, headlined by shooting 10/12 from beyond the arc. There’s no doubt that this is an impressive feat; after all, Anthony’s 37 are the most points in USA Olympic Basketball history. But in this game, USA scored 156 points, meaning Anthony only scored 23.7% of his team’s points. Plus, Nigeria has only won nine national games in 59 years, so the competition was nothing to write home about. 23.7% of a team’s points in an average USA basketball game is about 23 points. Nonetheless, Anthony’s Olympic record has not been matched in any professional USA Basketball competition, and until two nights ago, no one had come close.
You rarely see one player assert themselves as the clear best player on a national team because there is always so much talent. Kevin Durant, a top-3 scorer to ever live, didn’t lead his team in scoring once in the 2022 Olympics until the playoffs began. In 1992, when the Dream Team blazed to a Gold Medal at the Barcelona Olympics, no player averaged more than 18.0 PPG. Michael Jordan only averaged 14.9 PPG, and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were both in the single digits. So, you’d think that on a 2023 World Cup squad without a single All-NBA player, winning would happen by committee. You thought wrong. Anthony Edwards’ 34-point showing in the USA’s final FIBA World Cup preliminary game against the German national team was the closest anyone had come to matching Anthony’s total in the last 11 years. Not only did he also score 34.3% of the team’s points, but he was also clutch, hitting a cold-blooded game-tying three pointer late in the fourth quarter, and icing the game with huge free-throws. Carmelo was in his prime at age 28 when he dropped 37 points on Nigeria. Edwards is just 22 years of age.
But this isn’t the first big game where Edwards has made history. I took the liberty of finding the points scored by fifty players in their playoff debuts. These fifty players included some of the all-time greats, the best of the best in today’s game, and the top playoff debut’s in NBA history. The reason why I made this graph was because I remember watching game 1 of Grizzlies vs Timberwolves in the car on the way to my aunt’s house on April break, and marveling over how Edwards was taking over his first career playoff game as a 20 year old. So, I wanted to stack up his 36-point performance against the best of all time.
Edwards is at the very top of the hill, along with Derrick Rose, a league MVP, and Luka Doncic, who has pieced together a legendary first five years in the league, and beats out countless legends (basically everyone on the NBA 75 list). Clearly, this type of immediate big game pedigree doesn’t come around often, so a player like Edwards looking so comfortable in his first career playoff game translates to, “the league is in trouble.” The crazy part about all of this is that unlike Rose and Doncic, Edwards wasn’t even the first option on his own team. That was Karl-Anthony Towns, who averaged 3.3 PPG more than Edwards and made the All-NBA third team in the 2021-2022 season.
It’s one thing to have a good game, but the best players are consistently great. And, despite Edwards being the second option on the Timberwolves until the end of his third season, he has racked up a great playoff résumé (11 games) as a scorer. Here are the same 50 players on a graph that show their PPG and average Game Score (a stat that compiles everything from a player’s performance and puts it into numerical form) in the first two playoff series’ of their careers. Players who played when Game Score wasn’t tracked were given a score of 14.
A few free takes while I’m at it:
Anthony Davis was an unguardable monster in his time with New Orleans.
Magic was undoubtedly the greatest “value over scoring” player in NBA history.
The GOAT always prevails.
Now, to the point. As you can see, again, Edwards is close to the top of this list of all-time greats. His most similar comparison through his first two playoff series’ is LeBron James, which is a pretty good sign that greatness is on the way for Ant.
No matter the stage—college, regular season, playoffs, or World Cup—this 22 year-old is unfazed and lethal from all angles. He doesn’t miss games. He’s just a pure hooper. One more thing that I can point out about Edwards’ game is that it is reminiscent of the very man who Edwards is compared to most—Michael Jordan. This clip shows Edwards hitting an MJ-esque baseline fadeaway in crunch time of team USA’s game vs Germany.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1693322893164245321
Shades of Jordan and Kobe. Another thing about Edwards is that he doesn’t need offensive sets to score. He is in the 90th percentile of unassisted field goals, with 60.1% of his buckets and a whopping 48.4% of his 3-pointers have been without an assist. That’s more than Michael and Kobe is their primes. And much like Jordan and Kobe, Edwards is also becoming a terrific two-way player, and has an admirable tenacity to his game.
I made this article in attempt to convince you that Anthony Edwards is the future of our league, and will soon be an MVP winner and an all-time great. But you probably didn’t need numbers to convince you. All you have to do is watch the kid play. His nuclear athleticism, dangerous handle, above-average shooting, improving court vision and IQ, stout defense, and his killer instinct are enough to make the average fan believe that Edwards is up next.
The NBA is like the solar system—it’s star studded. Anthony Edwards might just be the sun. Hope you enjoyed.