There was a time early in his career when Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards would seemingly talk about his NBA All-Defensive Team aspirations on a weekly basis.
Perhaps the goals have gotten higher since then — he’s a strong candidate to earn All-NBA honors this season and may well be an MVP candidate in coming years. But his play over the final 15 minutes of Minnesota’s 110-101 win over the Grizzlies on Wednesday was yet another reminder that those all-defense abilities are very much still present.
Memphis forward Jaren Jackson Jr. had torched a number of players the Wolves threw at him, including defensive ace Jaden McDaniels. In the third frame, Edwards asked Wolves coach Chris Finch for the assignment. A few minutes later, Finch granted the request. And that was about it for Jackson’s success that night. Edwards stifled the all-star, effectively cutting off Memphis’ source of offense and lifting the Wolves to victory.
“He took the Jackson matchup and shut his water off and turned the game around on both ends,” Finch said. “(Jackson is) a heckuva player, but we had to get up underneath him, and Ant was excellent at that.”
Minnesota has several strong perimeter defenders. McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker are the first ones that come to mind. Their excellence on that end almost seems to overshadow Edwards’ on-ball abilities at times. But the all-star guard’s physicality sometimes creates problems for even the game’s best scorers that they simply cannot solve.
Finch noted Edwards “for sure is our most physical on-ball defender.”
Edwards feels playing football as a kid helped him with that.
“You gotta initiate the contact, be the first one to hit, and after that it’s a fight,” Edwards said. “We’re in the ring.”
And in that analogy, Edwards usually has the arm the referee raises at the end of the bout.
Players like McDaniels and Alexander-Walker use their length to make life difficult for opposing scorers. But speed and craft can at least help the best offensive players adjust to that. There isn’t much you can do when the defender in front of you makes every inch of the floor a chore to earn. When he is fully turned up, Edwards makes it nearly impossible for players to get to the spots from where they most like to shoot.
When Edwards puts on the clamps, the odds of him stealing the ball feel just as likely as his opponent scoring.
“It’s irritating. So I know how it feels, vice versa,” Edwards said of physical defense. “It’s definitely irritating because I don’t like it when people do it to me. So I know people won’t like it from me.”
It takes a certain specimen to be able to plant themselves that firmly in an offensive player’s space without fear of getting blown by off the bounce.
Edwards could think of two other players capable of such a style: Houston’s Dillon Brooks and Oklahoma City’s Lu Dort.
Those are perennial All-Defensive Team players. So why isn’t Edwards in that same conversation? There are examples of other two-way standouts grabbing all-defense selections in recent years, such as the Clippers’ Paul George and Kawhi Leonard and Miami’s Jimmy Butler.
“I think people gotta watch more Minnesota Timberwolves games, as far as whoever the (heck) the voters are. They just gotta watch the games because this is not my first time doing this,” Edwards said. “I have nights like this all the time where somebody gets hot, their best player gets hot and I go shut ‘em down the rest of the game. Nobody sees it but (local media). I think that goes into my votes of All-Defensive Team. But nobody sees it. Only y’all see it. I think they gotta watch more games. I think that’s the outcome.”
Perhaps there’s some truth to that. Minnesota doesn’t play a ton of nationally televised games. But there are also only 10 spots for All-Defensive honorees, and these days — where there are more data points to judge that end of the floor than ever before — those spots tend to be reserved for the players who specialize on the defensive side of the ball.
Edwards may very well be Minnesota’s best on-ball defender. But he’s asked to guard the other team’s best player much less often than McDaniels or Alexander-Walker. At some point, quantity has to outweigh quality.
Estimated Defensive Plus-Minus — a number put out by dunksandthrees.com — best correlates defensive excellence with what the eye test often suggests. And Edwards is graded quite favorably, slotted in the 88th percentile among players.
McDaniels is in the 96th percentile, and Alexander-Walker is in the 98th percentile, ranked 10th overall.
So while Edwards is acknowledged as a very good defender, it would be difficult to justify him as one of the league’s best 10. Perhaps that argument would be easier if the number of possessions where he guarded the other team’s best player increased.
Currently, he’s often just doing it when the game is in the balance. Edwards noted he would like more opportunities to do so, particularly down the stretch run of the season.
“I feel like I’m in my best shape now,” Edwards said.
But that’s rarely a responsibility bestowed upon the team’s best offensive player. The Wolves need Edwards to score and create. And if they really need him to deliver stops late, they’ll ask him to do so then. Finch doesn’t sound inclined to change the current approach.
“We have a lot of guys who can really guard on the ball, so it ends up being kind of situational,” Finch said. “I’m not going to start the game, probably, with that matchup (of Edwards on the best player), just because of the risk of foul trouble, putting him in that, which is harm’s way. So it’s really kind of game to game.”
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