Anthony Edwards is not Michael Jordan. Even after posting 43 points in a Game 1 win on the road against the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets, Edwards shut down any comparisons to the most revered basketball player of all time. (Ant’s Minnesota Timberwolves routed Denver in Game 2 to take a 2-0 series lead).
It’s basketball blasphemy to put anyone’s name alongside Jordan’s with the possible exceptions of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. And Ant is just 22 years old, too. But the comparisons had already been danced around since he started owning the playoffs. Now, the lid is beginning to be peeled off.
Kevin Garnett and Patrick Beverley both actually said the name “Jordan” when talking about Edwards. Draymond Green and Kendrick Perkins implied it. No matter what you think about that quartet, it’s hard to veer away from the direction they’re going in.
MJ is the greatest basketball player in history. Even as brash as Ant is at 22 years old, he understands that there’s no way anyone will get to that level. He doesn’t want that comparison. Doesn’t think he deserves it.
“I want it to stop,” Edwards said about those comparisons via Melissa Rohlin of Fox Sports. “He’s the greatest of all time. I can’t be compared to him.”
Too late, Ant.
The Anthony Edwards-Michael Jordan comparisons aren’t going anywhere
The look is there. The sweatband on the arm. Hands on the knees of his baggy shorts. The graceful glides through the air coupled with the effortless explosion and ferocity at the rim.
And the whole back your defender down before dropping the mid-range turnaround fadeaway thing? That isn’t Jordan-esque. That is Jordan. That’s the move everyone grew up practicing because Michael Jordan did it.
Then there’s the mentality, which may have been 90 percent of what made Jordan Jordan. Charles Barkley played with MJ on the 1992 Dream Team and against him in the NBA finals. They knew each other on and off the court.
He can be prone to hyperbole, but Barkley isn’t wrong when he sees the same killer instinct in Edwards that he felt in Jordan. Even before the Timberwolves completed their sweep of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and the Phoenix Suns in round one, Barkley was ready to go there:
(Edwards) said ‘I’m just going to kill everything in front of me, man.’ It reminded me so much of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. They would kill you to win a game.
To be clear, Edwards isn’t Jordan. If Kobe wasn’t Jordan and LeBron won’t be better than Jordan, Edwards won’t be either. Probably. But what he’s doing is reminiscent of MJ.
No one is ready to anoint Ant as the greatest of all time. But we don’t have to whisper it under our breath or stifle it in our throats anymore. Anthony Edwards looks, talks, acts and competes like Michael Jordan on a basketball court.
Anthony Edwards. Michael Jordan. Anthony Edwards. Michael Jordan. Get used to it.
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