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Led his the team to the WCF vs Mavs, he had a good playoff run
Won a gold medal
The T'wolves lost Karl Anthony Towns and got Randle instead.
Players usually have a breakout season after playing on Team USA.

Hard to imagine him as a n MVP candidate yet. Needs to have an All-NBA 1st Team-worthy regular season first, which he has yet to do. One step at a time.

If any of Giannis, Jokic, Embiid, Doncic or SGA are healthy and performing at a normal level, it'll be effectively impossible for Ant to deserve the MVP unless he shocks us all with an unlikely ATG performance.

He did mostly have another strong postseason and he does improve season to season. I'm hopeful 2025 is his best season yet. He has the tools, he is on the right track. I am curious to see how Randle affects things, though.

If Ant turns in another year of league-average efficiency, Minny is going to backslide.

High-usage players on top defensive teams generally get 'overrated'. Getting extra credit for winning that's driven primarily by their team's defense.

He seems to be overly reliant on shooting the 3 ball thus far. Frankly, I think that style is letting defenses off the hook. If I had the choice of AE shooting 15 threes or constantly coming down hill trying to get 15 ft’s; I’d choose the former..

Amare_1_Knicks wrote:He seems to be overly reliant on shooting the 3 ball thus far. Frankly, I think that style is letting defenses off the hook. If I had the choice of AE shooting 15 threes or constantly coming down hill trying to get 15 ft’s; I’d choose the former..

If only ANT had the energy to compete every possession on defense and drive downhill every drive

Amare_1_Knicks wrote:He seems to be overly reliant on shooting the 3 ball thus far. Frankly, I think that style is letting defenses off the hook. If I had the choice of AE shooting 15 threes or constantly coming down hill trying to get 15 ft’s; I’d choose the former..

That isn't new. He's been overly reliant on the 3 the entire time. It's a product of today's game, but hopefully he learned a little of how that gets him into trouble in the postseason. He certainly has the ability to attack in other ways, but he does need to take the lesson that bombing 13 3PA/g is stupid unless you're Steph (and that even he runs into issues with that strategy in the playoffs).

Balancing that with energy reserves for defense and the energy it costs to drive into the defense is going to be a bit of a learning curve situation for him, though. That's fairly normal. And he doesn't need to make it all the way to the rim, either. If he can master pulling up at the elbow and shooting efficiently there, he's going to get much more dangerous.

As ever, a mouthpiece. Dude needs to grow up a little. Still bombing away from 3. He's hitting them right now, but I'm still waiting for a significant normalization. We'll see if it comes. But right now, he's shooting Steph-level volume from 3 and that's going to bite him in the ass over a playoff series.

Ant frustrates me.

TroubleS0me wrote:

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He looked pretty good. Not too many threes, a pile of strong drives, wasn't sticky with the ball, played good defense. That was a nice game. Could have attacked a little more and didn't have his greatest shooting performance ever but a solid game.

6/20 versus the Spurs for 14 points. 8 boards, 4 assists, 1/9 from 3.

SAVAGELY useless in the second half, 2/11 FG, 0/4 from 3, hit his only free throw. 5 points. 1/8 (0/4 3pt) for 3 points in the 4th quarter.

Expectations:
- Finished 7th in MVP vote last year as 22 year old
- Led team to WCF with efficient 28/7/7
- Actually received young MJ comps from mainstream media during playoff run
- Pushed as the next American face of the league, especially during the Olympics
- Initial poll on this thread is asking if he would win MVP this year
- 5th in pre-season MVP odds from most betting sites

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2377628&p=113034308&hilit=edwards#p113034308

I started the thread above asking "SGA vs. ANT for the next 7 years" on 05/09/2024. This thread was created after Ant just had a 3 game stretch where he swept the Suns and went up 2-0 on the defending Champ Nuggets. Ant averaged 37/6/5 on .594/.458/.739 shooting during this 3 game stretch.

Ant still currently leads this poll 27-25 as I write this. Ant lead the poll 18-10 over SGA on 5/14/24 during the initial poll answers to get an even better idea of how high people were about Ant at that moment in time.

Reality:
He's improved his 3pt shooting but actually seems like he might have regressed in other areas. He can't get to the rim, he's not finishing all that great when he does, his AST/TOV ratio has regressed to a 4.0/3.0 ratio. Leading a 17-16 Wolves team that does not look like it will go anywhere this year.

17.4 PER -- .094 WS/48 -- + 0.5 On/Off

I don't want people to think I don't like him based on how critical I'm being in this post. I really want to see him succeed because he's had so many flashes of brilliance already at a young age. But I have been very disappointed by his season BECAUSE I think he has so much talent and potential.

After the playoff run last year and the invaluable Olympic experience he had, so many people including myself thought that he'd make the leap to true 1st team-All NBA levels of play. But quite frankly, I don't even know if he deserves an All-Star spot so far this year.

Doesn't mean he'll never put it together and reach the levels we expected. Going back to the SGA comp, Shai didn't make "the leap" until his age 24 season. So Edwards not doing it at 23 isn't a killer. But I expected more and I hope Edwards figures it out this year and goes on a 2nd half tear.

TroubleS0me wrote:

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Ah, Ant. Learning a lot from Durant about how to use the media to say all the wrong things.

TroubleS0me wrote:

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2nd quarter tanked them, but Ant was on fire. And Cade had a huge game against them.