Analysis: Let's face it: Timberwolves need to keep Anthony Edwards happy, but it's complicated

Chris Hine, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Oct 5, 2024

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MINNEAPOLIS — In discussing how newly-acquired Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo were going to fit on this season’s roster, Timberwolves coach Chris Finch also dropped in an interesting comment. He wanted to make certain fans knew that one of the reasons the Wolves traded Karl-Anthony Towns was to ensure they can mold and re-mold the roster in future years.

“It does give us flexibility and mechanisms to keep remaking the team going forward,” Finch said.

Finch didn’t expressly say that the team could remake and remold the team around Anthony Edwards, but that is the organizational intent with this trade. And when viewed through that lens, the Wolves’ willingness to deal Towns becomes clearer.

This season, Edwards is entering a new stage of his career, and that has consequences — and responsibilities — for the Wolves this season and beyond. He is beginning the first of a five-year contract that is paying him maximum money, slightly more than $42 million this season alone.

By the time he is playing on a new contract, he will be 28. Some of the greats of the game, the current and past players Edwards is chasing, won their first title by then. LeBron James did, so did Stephen Curry.

When a team, especially one that is mid-market, has a potential MVP candidate on its roster at this stage in his career, it must demonstrate it can be a consistent winner in order to keep him around. Finch and Wolves front office assistant Dell Demps know this too well from their time in New Orleans, when Anthony Davis asked for a trade from the Pelicans organization at 26 as the franchise was still figuring out how best to build a contending team.

In Davis’ case, other factors may have been at play; he seemed to already pre-determine where he wanted to go in Los Angeles, one of the prime NBA markets, to play with James.

Edwards’ mentality as he enters his age 23 season is different. He didn’t tack on a player option to the fifth year of his deal, and if you speak to those that have known Edwards most of his life, fame doesn’t much matter to him. He’d rather not be as famous as he’s getting now, if he could choose not to be. Chasing the advertising opportunities and attention of a larger market also doesn’t really appeal to him.

But winning does matter to him. There is an ultra competitive nature in Edwards that won’t put up with losing for very long. When the Wolves lost to Memphis in the 2022 playoffs and Denver in 2023, those losses stung Edwards hard, even if the Wolves weren’t supposed to win them going into the postseason. When Edwards began working with his current player development coach, Chris Hines, he told Hines he wanted to be the best shooting guard of all time, which meant he was chasing Michael Jordan — and Edwards knows that means winning titles.

Here’s a hypothetical situation that might have been on the Wolves’ mind as they pondered the long-term vision of the franchise. In two or three years, with older starters like Rudy Gobert and Mike Conley on the team — and Towns still here — the Wolves come to the end of this current iteration of the team without a championship.

Maybe they make another conference finals run, maybe not. But by the time Edwards is 26, the Wolves don’t have a title, and now have to hit the reset button on this version of the franchise. Ownership, whether it’s Glen Taylor, or Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, has invested a lot of luxury tax money in going for it, it’s time to cut some losses and recoup some money.

But there are few ways they can overhaul the roster that make the team better, and so the Wolves go through a period of time when they can’t surround Edwards with the kind of talent needed to be a contender. Maybe they make the playoffs, but they aren’t serious contenders. Or maybe they don’t. By that time in his career, does Edwards begin looking elsewhere that he can win a title?

This trade, from the team’s perspective, assures they have the option to re-shape the roster, since they save money in the short term while offloading Towns’ supermax deal that had at least four years on it.

All indications are Edwards is happy in Minnesota. When Edwards told Vanity Fair in February he thought New York and Los Angeles were “cool” but “they ain’t better than Minnesota,” he excited the fan base that he would be around as long as he was able to play.

One of the ways that could change is if the Wolves stop winning for long. The Wolves’ can’t afford the risk of asking Edwards to stick around through a rebuild. He might not have the patience Towns did for most of his tenure.

When Edwards reaches his mid to late 20s, just making the playoffs won’t be good enough. Only title contention will do. So the Wolves took a gamble in the short term in making a major move from a team that reached the Western Conference finals a season ago in the hopes they can keep doing it in perpetuity.

Part of the NBA business is keeping star players happy, especially those capable of winning MVP awards. The way the Wolves will keep Edwards happy is by staying a contender as long as they possibly can.