Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves can no longer be considered the underdogs in the West each and every year.
This team has shown time and again that it’s built for playoff success, and with LaMelo Ball added to the roster this summer, I’m backing them to go all the way to the NBA Finals.
Two conference finals appearances in the last two years should tell you this is no hot take. Sure, the West is stacked, but there has undoubtedly been a balancing of the conferences this off-season.
Hop on the hype train with me, and come see why Minnesota should be seen as one of the main contenders for the Larry O’Brien trophy in 2027.
Ant and Melo: The NBA’s best offensive duo
Yeah, I said it.
You might say that’s jumping the gun for two players yet to share the court, but I genuinely think this will age like fine wine.
We know what Edwards is offensively — the elite athleticism, the crafty handles, and the jumper that’s smooth as butter. Ant-Man turns 25 next week.
Ball, taken two picks after him in that 2020 draft, gets there a couple of weeks later. Neither guard has reached his prime.
What Minnesota has now is two players who can create their own shot and punish you from deep. Edwards averaged 28.8 points last season. Ball put up 20.1 points and 7.1 assists in Charlotte while finishing third in the entire NBA in three-pointers made at 3.8 per game.
Two seasons ago, Edwards shot 39.5% from three on 4.1 makes a night. Only four other players in NBA history have managed that combination — Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Buddy Hield and Damian Lillard.
Now put them on the floor together.
Defenses have to choose. Load up on an Edwards drive and Ball is open on the wing. Blitz Ball 30 feet from the rim and Edwards gets a catch-and-shoot look or an easy cut to the hoop — LaMelo finds him 100/100 times.
There isn’t a coverage that solves both problems at once.
Ball also created 17.5 points per game off his assists last season, ninth league-wide. Edwards has never played alongside a guard who can find him like that, and he’s never had a season where he wasn’t asked to take the primary ball-handling role.
Oklahoma City has Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chet Holmgren. San Antonio has Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle.
Those are terrifying pairings, but they’re guard-and-big combinations you can scheme against with size and coverage. Nobody else in the league is running out two perimeter shot creators who both shoot it at this volume from three.
Then there’s the way they play. Edwards is force, the downhill drives, the dunks that end careers. Ball is touch and flair, the no-look pass out of nowhere. And then there’s the mentality.
The Timberwolves’ unshakable confidence
Think back to last April.
Minnesota had just won Game 2 in Denver to take control of a first-round series, and McDaniels was asked about attacking the Nuggets.
Speaking to reporters, he said: “Go after Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders. Tim Hardaway, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, the whole team, just go at them.”
He called out a three-time MVP by name, in his own building, in the middle of a playoff series. Then he added that Denver didn’t have anyone who could protect the rim.
Denver refused to take the bait publicly — Cam Johnson’s line was that Minnesota had been talking all season, and David Adelman dismissed it with a joke about McDaniels starting a podcast. Then the Wolves went out and won the series anyway.
That attitude runs through the roster. Edwards has never once carried himself like a man who thinks he’s the underdog, no matter what the seeding said. This is a mean, physical, genuinely unbothered basketball team.
Compare that to the two teams above them. OKC is coming off a defeat to San Antonio that should sting for a while. And the Spurs found out in the Finals that experience matters. The West is there for the taking.
The Big 3 no one is talking about
Jaden McDaniels was phenomenal last season. He set career highs across the board — 14.8 points, 2.7 assists, 51.5% from the floor and 41.2% from three. He scored 20 or more points 17 times, and in 16 of those games he shot 50% or better. That is absurd efficiency for a third option.
In the playoffs he looked like a star. Not a solid role player having a good series — a star.
He’s also arguably the best one-on-one defender in the NBA. He takes the toughest assignment every single night, whichever position it happens to be, and he takes it without complaint.
That’s the perfect third piece behind Edwards and Ball. He hit 44.7% on wide-open threes last year, so the spacing those two create is going to feed him directly. If he holds that level, Minnesota has a big three worth the label.
Don’t forget Rudy Gobert either. The four-time Defensive Player of the Year finally gets to play without a second non-shooter clogging the paint next to him, and the lobs and short-roll reads should come far easier.
Ayo Dosunmu, Terrence Shannon Jr., Josh Green and Jaylen Clark give Chris Finch real wing depth, and Joan Beringer is a genuinely exciting young big.
Is the roster finished? No. Losing Julius Randle and Naz Reid in the same summer left a hole at power forward that Finch has to solve, and I’d expect at least one more move before February’s trade deadline.
But this roster is no joke. Two guards who can score 50 between them, the best perimeter defender in basketball, and a center who has spent his whole career making opponents miserable.
I’ve seen enough. Minnesota is going to the Finals.
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