When Anthony Edwards has the ball in his hands and a chance to tie or take the lead in the closing moments, missing the shot is the furthest thing from his mind. It does not matter if he has been hitting everything in sight in the minutes leading up to it or hasn’t made a thing.
Once he gets his hands on the ball, it’s going up, no matter what. The thought of failure never occurs to him, no matter how often he has done just that. So when his Minnesota Timberwolves were down by two with 10 seconds to play against the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night, Edwards already had his mind made up before the ball was even inbounded to him.
He bounded up the court, saw Bucks guard Kevin Porter Jr. in front of him and licked his chops.
At that moment, he was 10 of 32 from the field and 4 of 16 from 3-point range, a woeful shooting night that came on the heels of an exquisite run of three straight games of 40 or more points. He considered going to the rim for a potential game-tying shot, but Bucks center Brook Lopez was there to thwart the drive. He put Porter on skates and got to his favorite move — the step-back 3 — near the top of the arc. He let it fly, and it hit the front of the rim.
“I thought it was going in,” Edwards said.
It did not, and the Timberwolves lost 103-101. It was another in a long line of bad home losses for them this season. The Bucks were without injured stars Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard. The Wolves also have lost to the Miami Heat without Jimmy Butler, the Sacramento Kings without De’Aaron Fox and the Washington Wizards, which were without a win in the previous 16 games before beating Minnesota.
Losses like these crush the momentum the Wolves appeared to have been building.
On Saturday, they had a spirited victory over the previously surging Portland Trail Blazers, overcoming the absence of Edwards, Mike Conley, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to win their third straight game and move into sixth place in the Western Conference. They followed that by starting Monday’s game in Cleveland by missing their first 16 shots and then shot 38 percent from the field and 22 percent from 3 in the loss to the Bucks.
“A tough one,” said Rudy Gobert, who had 20 points, 14 rebounds and four assists. “I’m going to go home, and I’m mad. It’s a two-point game, and there’s so many plays, so many shots, so many plays that we only needed one of them to win the game.”
All of the misses on Wednesday night didn’t even register for Edwards in those closing seconds because of all the shots he’s made this season. He has made more 3s this season than any other player, a truly remarkable achievement for a player who heard so many doubts about his shooting before he was drafted.
Edwards is proud of the work he has put in to become one of the best 3-point shooters in the game. He has made 28 more 3-pointers than Steph Curry this season. The NBA asked him to participate in the 3-point contest at All-Star weekend, but he declined. It has turned into an incredible weapon for him, except for at the end of games.
Edwards has been one of the most prolific scorers the league has ever seen through his first four and a half seasons. His young career is filled with highlight-reel dunks, Euro steps through multiple defenders and more 3-pointers before his 24th birthday than any player in NBA history. Fewer and further between is one of the signature plays in sports: the last-second shot.
Edwards is 3 of 11 this season when the Timberwolves are trailing by three points or fewer or tied in the final minute of games. After the game, a poster on X put out a compilation of every shot he has ever taken with a chance to tie the game or take the lead with 24 seconds or less left in the fourth quarter or overtime. He is 2 of 21.
Every Anthony Edwards game winning/game tying shot attempt
(a FGA to take the lead or tie with 24 seconds or less left in the 4th quarter/OT) pic.twitter.com/eTHK0MS9vb
— Pitless (@pitlessball) February 13, 2025
The numbers don’t faze Edwards. Each miss to him is a fluke or a statistical improbability in his mind because he is so certain of himself.
“Anytime the ball leaves my hand, if I can see the rim, I think it’s going in,” Edwards said. “So, I live with everything that happened tonight.”
There was not an ounce of regret in his voice. He did not wish that he had gone to the rim because he saw Lopez there and knew that would be a tough shot. He did not think about pulling up for a midrange jumper because he did that on the previous possession, and it went in and out as well. He is shooting a career-high 42 percent from 3 this season. So all those misses that came earlier in the game just meant he was due to make one.
“I’ve just got so much faith in it,” Edwards said, looking the reporter in the eye who asked him about it. “Like, you know when you work on something, like you work on typing up reports or something, you know what I’m saying? That’s how I feel about my trey ball. That’s how I feel about any time I shoot the ball.”
The loss to Milwaukee was the Wolves’ league-leading 19th in clutch time, defined as a game within five points in the final five minutes. Edwards, of course, figures prominently in the shortfall. He has a 38.1 percent usage rate in clutch time, but all of his shooting numbers that have been so impressive this season plummet in those moments.
He is shooting 45 percent from the field this season, a number weighed down by woeful numbers at the rim (65 percent), inside of 10 feet (43 percent) and under 33 percent shooting from the midrange. But he is shooting just 41.8 percent from the field and 31 percent from 3 during clutch time.
Despite those struggles, coach Chris Finch had no issue with Edwards’ shot selection at that moment. Finch had two timeouts but decided not to call one after Lopez’s free throws put the Bucks up by two. Finch did not want to give Bucks coach Doc Rivers a chance to get a more defensive-minded lineup on the floor. So he let Edwards take control and said he was happy with the final possession.
“That’s kind of his shot,” Finch said.
Other factors played into his decision. Randle (adductor), DiVincenzo (toe) and Conley (finger) were all out of the lineup. Conley’s absence was big because there was not another player on the floor capable of directing traffic the way Conley does, which was part of the calculus in Finch deciding not to call timeout. Without a true quarterback on the court, the ball was always just going straight to Edwards anyway.
“I missed a bunch of layups tonight. I missed a bunch of everything,” Edwards said. “The layups, the middies, I got to make those to try to get my trey ball going when it’s not falling.”
Most of the other Timberwolves were struggling to shoot the ball as well. Naz Reid was 1 of 7 from 3, Nickeil Alexander-Walker was 1 of 5 and Jaylen Clark and Rob Dillingham combined to shoot 1 of 11 off the bench.
Reid did finish with 22 points and 13 rebounds, and Terrence Shannon Jr. had his best game as a pro with 11 points, six assists and five rebounds.
On a night when almost no one could find their shooting touch, it was best to go to the one player Finch knew would not let all those previous misses bother him.
That is the mentality required of an alpha scorer. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, all of the greats are revered for their fearlessness in the big moment, no matter what has happened leading up to it. Edwards has that same supreme belief in his abilities.
Maybe the right play was to go to the basket. Maybe he could have gotten by Lopez and gotten a clean look at the rim. But Edwards wasn’t thinking about that after the game. He wasn’t thinking about any of his other misses in big moments, either. He was already looking forward to taking the next one.
“It’s going to go in. It just didn’t go in tonight,” Edwards said. “We’ll be all right.”
(Photo: David Berding / Getty Images)
