We don’t live in a reasonable time.
To my knowledge, we don’t have a real-life Ethan Hunt rooting around in blown-up submarines and jumping between planes to keep the world order as we know it from disintegrating. Unfortunately, without the IMF, we’re stuck in the Entity’s reality, chock-full of pod bros, ex-NBA journeymen, and Twitter trolls roaming the internet looking for a hot take that will save them from their mom’s basement and thrust them into the luxurious life of internet fame and fortune.
After the Oklahoma City Thunder unceremoniously bounced the Minnesota Timberwolves out of the Western Conference Finals in a Game 5 shellacking for the second straight year, Anthony Edwards found himself in the crosshairs of anyone with an IP address.
One playoff series won’t define Ant
Edwards had the worst playoff series of his young career. He scored 16 points on 13 shots in Game 4 and 19 points on 7-18 shooting in a do-or-die Game 5 that the Timberwolves lost by 30 points. In binary terms, league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander bested Edwards. Ant has come up short in two straight semifinals and hasn’t won a championship yet.
Ant-Man became Cant-Man. Baby MJ now needs a paternity test. Cancel Ant’s attempt to become the face of the league. And, bizarrely, Ant can’t win because the 23-year-old isn’t a family man.
The rings culture incels are on Ant’s doorstep armed with 80 years of NBA history to try to tell us why we’ll never be able to speak Ant’s name in the same breath as Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and the all-time greats.
People are comparing Edwards to the entire legacy of NBA legends
The problem with these reactionary, clickbait arguments is that they’re comparing the first five years of what will likely be a 15- to 20-year career for Edwards to the entire legacy of these legends. Ant can’t be MJ because we saw Jordan win five MVPs and six championships. He can’t be the face of the league because Kobe won five titles and is considered the GOAT by those who believe the NBA was established in the year 2000. Ant can’t be Larry Bird or Shaquille O’Neal because they had families (to varying degrees).
Unfortunately for the bots, some of us can still read and understand history, not just the Google Gemini recap. Despite the loss, Anthony Edwards is on pace to join the greats someday. At 23 years old, he’s already a three-time All-Star. He’s been named second-team All-NBA in consecutive seasons. Edwards has led his team to the playoffs in four out of five seasons and back-to-back Western Conference Finals. And he is consistently towards the top of any age-based scoring list.
We are not here to take anything away from these NBA legends. They obviously all carved out one-of-a-kind careers and will be remembered forever as some of the best basketball players ever. Still, let’s remember their careers accurately and stop mythologizing them for a second.
Michael Jordan battled to get to the top
For those who remember, Michael Jordan was a rocketship the second he touched an NBA court at the age of 21 in 1984. He won rookie of the year and was named second team All-NBA in his rookie season.
Still, his airness didn’t exactly lead his team to glory immediately.
Jordan didn’t get out of the first round until his fourth season in the NBA in 1988. His Chicago Bulls were a combined 1-9 through his first three playoff appearances. Jordan scored 63 points in a double-overtime loss in 1986 to the eventual champion Boston Celtics, and his best teammate early in his career was Orlando Woolridge.
Michael Jordan won his first playoff series in his fourth season in the NBA, the same year he won his first of five MVP awards. The Bulls immediately lost in the East semifinals 4-1 against the Bad Boy Pistons. Jordan lost in the East Finals in consecutive seasons in 1989 and 1990 to the Detroit Pistons.
He finally broke through, made it to his first finals, and won his first of six championships in 1991. He was 28 and in his seventh year in the league.
Ant doesn’t hold a candle to Michael Jordan’s full career. Still, things get much closer if you compare Ant’s first five years to Jordan’s pre-double threepeat run.
Kobe Bryant is a better comparison
Kobe is probably a cleaner comparison to Edwards.
Ant entered the NBA as a one-and-done 19-year-old, and Kobe came straight from high school and was barely 18 when he debuted in the NBA. Kobe started seven games across his first two NBA seasons and was the Los Angeles Lakers’ sixth man in two playoff runs that ended in a 4-1 loss in the West semis in his rookie year. The Utah Jazz swept LA 4-0 in the 1997 West finals.
Kobe broke the starting lineup in his strike-shortened third season and played well in a 4-0 West semifinals sweep at the hands of the eventual champion San Antonio Spurs. Kobe became a bona fide super superstar in Year 4 and was off and running, winning three straight championships with Shaq and the gang and two more with Pau Gasol while becoming the face of the league over the next decade plus and one of the most iconic players in sports history.
Shaq joined Kobe
Speaking of Shaq, he put up Wilt Chamberlain numbers from his first game in the NBA, but missed the playoffs in his first season. The Magic got swept in the first round in Shaq’s second year. He made the finals, and the Houston Rockets swept Orlando in Year 3, his age-22 season.
The Magic got swept in the 1996 Eastern Conference Finals. Shaq had an up-and-down playoff record in his first three seasons with the Lakers before breaking through in his eighth season in the NBA. He won three straight Finals MVP awards from age 28 to 30.
Edwards is ahead of most contemporary legends
Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors missed the playoffs in each of his first three seasons before the NBA’s most recent dynasty kicked off in his sixth season, three months after his 27th birthday.
Larry Bird was nearly the same age Anthony Edwards is today after completing his fifth season when he made his NBA debut in 1979 and won a championship at 24 in his second year. Magic Johnson won his first of five titles as a rookie alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a bygone era in which two superteams ran the NBA for a decade.
Even LeBron James missed the playoffs in his first two seasons, led a shoddy Cleveland Cavaliers team to a finals appearance (and got swept) in Year 4, and didn’t raise the Larry O’Brien trophy until his ninth season.
Hell, if the Thunder are four wins away from their first championship and the start of a legendary run for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Still, even he missed the playoffs in three straight seasons and will turn 27 a month after the NBA Finals.
Edwards is still establishing his legacy
All of these legends eventually found a way to get over the hump and enjoy iconic careers. Still, even the GOATs of the sport had to go through years of growing pains before finally summiting the mountain.
There’s no guarantee that Anthony Edwards will one day join them on basketball’s Mount Olympus. Plenty of talented players’ promising careers fizzled out before they could etch their names in the history books. But to cross Ant’s name off the next-up list because he fell to a 68-win buzzsaw in Oklahoma City is just the latest and dumbest chapter in today’s basketball discourse. Anthony Edwards is right on track.
We all want to remember Michael Jordan shrugging after making six threes in a half in the 1992 NBA Finals. Kids everywhere recreate his game-winning shot over Byron Scott in 1998 to win his sixth and final championship. But who wants to remember that he fouled out of the third and final game of a first-round sweep at the hands of the Celtics? Which kids are recreating him shooting 9-30 in Game 3 against the same Celtics in 1987, as the Bulls got swept in the first round for the second straight season?
If Anthony Edwards eventually wins an NBA championship, every struggle before the banner goes up will be lost to history, just like Jordan’s Game 4 and 5 performances in the 1989 Eastern Conference Finals, in which Jordan and the Bulls lost three straight games and the Detroit Pistons eliminated them. I’ll let you look those up on your own, and maybe you’ll see more Anthony Edwards in a young Michael Jordan than your TikTok algorithm wants you to see.