Man I wish I were a Minnesota Timberwolves fan... well not the whole we are stuck with the most overrated player on earth Rudy Gobert part of being a Timberwolves fan but all the rest would be great.
You see, the Timberwolves have Anthony Edwards. At just 24 years of age, Edwards is the same age that Michael Jordan was when he won his first MVP. As a Bulls fan who watched over 500 of Michael Jordan's games, it would be absolutely absurd for me to say anyone is as good as Jordan. I still have not seen that. But in the all of the years since Jordan, there has only been one player that made me say "Damn that guy reminds me of a young Michael Jordan". Anthony Edwards is that player.
Now mind you, I am going off a far smaller sample size. I don't watch many of Edwards' regular season games, but I have watched almost all of his playoff games over the past three years. His tenacity alone reminds me of Jordan. He will attack until the other team begs for mercy. His ability to finish at the rim is amazing. He seems to hate losing more than he enjoys winning (something very rare these days) and he wants the ball in his hands when it matters most.
But this isn't really the reason he reminds me of Jordan and why I am so jealous he is not a Chicago Bull. This week, Edwards said that his goal was to "reach a point where I'm unstoppable". and he means it. Unlike many other players who already thing they are God's gift to basketball, Edwards is constantly working to reach the unstoppable level. Last year he saw how defenders were able to sag off of him at the three point line so they had a better chance of stopping his drives. So Edwards spent the off season perfecting his three point shot. Last year he took 10 per game and made 39.5% of them. But he didn't feel that made him unstoppable yet.
This year he noticed that he had already dominated the inside game at the rim and now the long range game behind the arc, but he was missing a piece. He was not satisfied with his mid-range game which had an efficiency of 36.2% (lowest among all players with at least 100 shots). So you know what he did this summer? He dedicated a ton of time and effort to master that part of his game. He even worked with the GOAT himself Michael Jordan in order to try to improve his game. Edwards is n all NBA 24 year old player who said "I'm not good enough". That is Jordan-like. Could you imagine if Shaq had put in half that amount of work on the pieces of his game that were lacking... mainly free throws? Or if he had said "I'm not good enough" and put his pride aside and shot free throws underhand? he may have scored 50 points per game.
Now I'm not saying Edwards will score 50 points a game or even 35 points per game, but a guy as deadly as he already is working so hard to improve makes me so damn jealous. Word has it that second year Bull Matas Buzelis has a huge chip on his shoulder for slipping so far in last years draft. Reports are that he is busting his ass to show every GM they were wrong. Although this makes me hopefully, I haven't seen any results yet. Hopefully starting tomorrow night Matas will start showing the world what he can do.