Brandon Jackson

Anthony Edwards may not be the future face of the league, or the best young American basketball player like we expected him to be. And that’s okay.

As the basketball watching public, we always are enamored with who is the next big thing. We want to anoint someone the next superstar as soon as humanly possible. Sometimes we jump the gun, and sometimes we get it wrong.

I will not go as far to say that we got it wrong with Anthony Edwards, but we definitely jumped the gun. And that’s our fault, not his fault.

He’s 23 years old, and 5 years into his career. The book has not been finished by a long shot. But what has been established now, is that he runs out of gas by the time the conference come around.

He admitted that was true last year, but his game 4 performance is telling us it’s true again this year.

39 percent shooting from the field, 14 percent from three in game 4. Only got up 13 shots. 13 shots is unacceptable from your best player when you are down in a series 2-1. That just can’t happen. If you’re going to go down, you better go down swinging. But Anthony Edwards ended the game with the bat still on his shoulders.

We want to give him that “next up” title, but he hasn’t earned it yet. And yes, his team is in the conference finals, but his play has not been up to par. The box scores look good. He’s averaging 26 points, 8 rebounds, and 6 assists. It’s a very good line. But clearly, down 3-1 the Wolves need more.

In game 4, they needed their leader to say, “I’m not losing this game.” I know Oklahoma City had a lot to do with that not being the case, but we have seen in this league, when a player is good enough, it doesn’t matter what that other team can do.

Ant is an amazing athlete, a true two-way player in a league that has fewer of them than ever before, and a true bright spot in today’s NBA. But, he’s still learning on the job.

Again, he’s only 23 years old, so he doesn’t have to have it all figured out right now. But we would have liked to have seen some year-over-year progress. There was a lot of talk about Tracy McGrady over the weekend. He’s beloved by NBA fans who watched him. He had all the talent in the world, and yet, still never reached his full potential. He’s still a Hall of Famer, though.

One could see that type of trajectory for Anthony Edwards. Although Ant has already surpassed what T-Mac did team wise, getting to the conference finals twice already. It’s on the board Ant could end up being the awesome scorer, cool shoes, highlight dunks guy of this generation. To be fair, he already is that now. He took that title away from Ja Morant pretty easily.

It’s up to him if he wants to be more than that. He  gets a pass for running out of gas the first time, because he didn’t know what to expect. The second time around should be a wakeup call. Yes, he ran into what seems to be an all-time great team in the Oklahoma City Thunder, but the Wolves did beat them by 40, and only lost to them by 2 in game 4. They are beatable.

We’ll see how Ant performs in game 5 with the season on the line, but being down 3-1, it almost doesn’t matter.

He’s said before he didn’t want to be the face of the league, and maybe we should have believed him.