If the question is “Do you rock with Anthony Edwards?” the answer is: Yes. Unequivocally. Love him.
Well, there is one equivocation.
You can’t do what Edwards did, and say what he said, no matter how boorish and dumb and annoying a fan is, while you’re waiting to check back into a playoff game involving your basketball team, the Minnesota Timberwolves. That the NBA fined him $50,000 for the language and the gesture is immaterial; it could have been $100,000, it could have been zero dollars. It’s not about the fine or the league, really.
Nor is this about respectability politics, or a Gen Xer wailing about the good old days. This is a simple request, from one guy who can’t hoop at all to someone who’s one of the best handful of players in the world. From one father to another. From an older Black man to a young, athletic and telegenic Black man. Take it for what you will.
Kids are watching. Kids who idolize you. Young kids. This has to start mattering more to you.
Because what kid doesn’t love watching Anthony Edwards play? It doesn’t matter if it’s a White kid from Athens, Ga., where Edwards starred at the University of Georgia, or a Black kid in South Minneapolis, just a few minutes’ drive from where Edwards plays now. (Or, if you want, a Latino kid from Athens and an Asian kid from South Minneapolis.) Ant is a nightly highlight film. He plays above the rim, he splashed 3s this year at a career-best .395 during the regular season. He’s woofing at LeBron James and Luka Dončić in this series, just like he side-eyed his idol, Kevin Durant, in last year’s first round.
He’s already an Olympian and he’s one of the most quotable and real guys in the league, and he’s still just 23. This is the first act of his career. What will follow as he continues to add to his game? His folks in and around his hometown, Atlanta, love him and surround him with that love. If you don’t like watching Anthony Edwards hoop, to steal Grant Napear’s line, you don’t like NBA basketball.
But he’s got to pull back. Just a little. Like, three percent. Not because it’ll keep him getting Adidas and Sprite commercials.
But because people, and especially young folks, emulate you – on and off the court.
There’s a hypocrisy among the media. And since I’m in the media, I’m guilty of it, too: We demand athletes say things beyond pablum non-answers to questions, and robotic encounters with fans. Then, when they do, as Edwards did, we jump them. But there’s a difference between being honest in your interactions with the public and … what Edwards said and did.
Edwards, famously, has rejected the notion of being the next face of the league, after LeBron and Steph Curry call it quits, whenever that is. Why he has done so, he has yet to share with everyone. But it’s his right, just as it is Zion Williamson’s or Ja Morant’s, to pass on it. But both of them have struggled on and off the court the last couple of years. Edwards, in contrast, has been blazing for the Wolves, carrying them to the Western Conference finals last season, and a split of their first two games in Los Angeles this week, with the series shifting to Minneapolis this weekend for Games 3 and 4.
(There is some xenophobia at play here. The notion that a Victor Wembanyama, because he’s from France, or a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, because he’s Canadian, can’t be the NBA’s face is … wrong. Especially for a league that leans into its large number of international players as proof of the NBA’s worldwide appeal. Shai’s already in a bunch of commercials, and Wemby will as soon as he decides that’s something he wants to do.)
And, to be fair, the “face of the league” notion is kind of silly. What does it mean, exactly? No one person comes to personify the best of the game, which is why it usually winds up being two or three guys, and sometimes more. Was Tim Duncan the face of the NBA in the early 2000s or Kobe Bryant? Or Shaq? They all won multiple championships; they all were unquestionably the best at their respective positions. One could argue, though, that the face of the league during that decade was Allen Iverson, another great player who chafed at the idea of changing anything about his life or his friends. There was something honorable in that refusal even when I disagreed with his position.
Similarly, Edwards is already keeping receipts on his critics, including Carmelo Anthony.
In case you missed it, Anthony, on a recent episode of his “7 PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony” podcast, said that Edwards had no choice but to be the face of the game. ‘Melo broke it down in a segment he does on the pod called “F— Wit’ It” or “F— Outta Here.” (For those who don’t understand, that’s basically “I agree with the statement” or “I disagree with the statement.”)
The statement Anthony’s co-host put to him was, “Anthony Edwards rejecting being the future face of the NBA.”
“I’m ‘f— outta here.’ And I love Ant,” Carmelo said. “But you can’t run from that. Especially when everybody’s trying to give it to you. They’re trying to give you the face (of the league). You can’t run from that. … You can’t reject it and then be in like four or five commercials. You can’t do that, say, ‘I don’t want this,’ and then got Adidas, Sprite, this commercial.
“You can’t reject it. You’ve gotta pick a side. Either you just play ball and do what you do, or you’re gonna (be the face). This is what comes with being a superstar. This is what wearing the white hat is. …. You ready to wear the white hat or not?”
You don’t have to agree with Anthony. He went through his trials and tribulations at a young age, too. So, too, did just about everyone who’s a talking head or analyst on the NBA right now. So did I. None of us is Caesar’s wife here. I get that. Grace should allow us all to let Edwards have the time to mature and grow, and figure out what his best voice is. It may come in five years, or 10, or not at all. One suspects it will.
But it’s important to note that no one seeks out the honorific. It becomes inevitable as one raises both their game and Q Rating. Michael Jordan couldn’t be hawking Nikes every six seconds on TV — or McDonald’s, Gatorade, Wheaties, Hanes and Chevrolets, in the ’80s and ’90s — and then say “Please, please leave me alone! I just want to hoop!’” Nor could Magic Johnson or Larry Bird, both familiar with rings and with moving product. Nor could LeBron or Steph, two men who came from very different places to dominate the game for much of the last two decades. It comes with being the best.
And that’s the issue. Anthony Edwards, very soon, could be the best basketball player in the NBA. In the world. He’s got a case. He’s earned the right to make that case. But of whom much is given — and, to be sure, earned — much is expected.
True then.
True now.
(Photo of Anthony Edwards: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
