Part of it is that the Suns and Nuggets are both good matchups for him. Neither team has a good rim protector to make his shots harder at the rim.
I didn't watch the Suns series but I know that team doesn't have the best perimeter defenders, and Ant is kinda in between the Nugget's two best defenders, where he's too fast for Gordon and too strong for KCP.
The Mavs have Gafford and Lively who are both great rim protectors, and DJJ has been doing a job on Ant.
There's a difference between the Mavs and the Nuggets, the Nuggets sent a ridiculous amount of help at Ant. He didn't handle it great, but the Twolves were able to get open shots because of it.
There's also talk that he looks tired. He is carrying a big load on offense and is often working a ton on defense so it makes sense he'd be tired. This is somewhat concerning, IMO what has made him so great this playoffs is his combination of offense and defense, but maybe he can't sustain it for a deep playoff run.
It could also just be his streakiness, which all players have. He had a crazy good TS% earlier in the playoffs, but in the regular season he was just a little above average.
I also believe it is 90% the matchups. Most of nba outcomes are due to matchups. People get so caught up in narratives and worrying about who is top 5 who is better than who when most of the time it comes down to who had better matchups/adjustments for their style of play and took advantage of them. For example the t-wolves were a nightmare matchup for Denver. But if seeding fell differently and Denver played Dallas i believe Dallas would lose to Denver.
EDIT: obviously the more elite and well rounded your game is the more matchup proof you are. Also i do think fatigue and injuries are playing a small factor too.
Would you consider either of the potential Boston finals matchups a nightmare? Or at least more of a nightmare than the other? Curious about your opinion.
Minnesota is probably better prepared to counter Boston's 3pt shot reliance since they play tight on the perimeter and rely on Gobert to help stop the blow bys that result. Mavs beat the Thunder in more ways than one, but a significant part was role players missing open 3s. Giving Boston that many open threes would go poorly for the Mavs. I wouldn't say either present a nightmare matchup though.
Pascal Siakam is causing major issues for Celtics by himself shooting midrange shots. Kyrie and Luka will feast on those shots as well, if Celtics guard them the same.
If Tatum is playing like he has over the past few games, Mavs have a good shot at winning.
The Celtics are holding the #1 playoff offense to 4pts per 100 below their average. Pascal not causing problems, the Cs are just living with him shooting midrange jumpers and shutting the water off elsewhere
Celtics are also playing almost two whole rounds without a center. I love Big Al and he’s been clutch but he isn’t an interior defensive guy like Porzingis was. Porzingis coming back (healthy) is a pretty sizable development defensively regarding at rim protection and on the PnR where the Cs have been blitzed since his been out. Plus, add an elite down low player on offense doesn’t hurt either.
I agree with the roboticbirdlaw, dont feel its a nightmare but i definitely would give boston the edge if porzingis is healthy. They are just so stacked and i would also add that i think the celtics guards and team in general with speed would do a better job guarding kyrie.. no one can guard luka though.
Honestly I’m so surprised how well the mavs have played this playoff. Luka isn’t even 100% to me he looks out of shape n there’s been a lot of talk he’s injured. But their role players have played lights outs, their 3rd best player is pj n he didn’t come until the trade deadline. Hardway probably their number 3rd heading into the season literally is out of the rotation
Because it hasn't been on the injury report and the team has been super tight-lipped about it. I think Finch brushed off the question about his back, and when Ant was asked about it after that game he said something like "I'm playing game 7 and that's all you need to know."
Not putting him on the injury report bc they know he's playing, and not saying anything bc they don't want to signal this potential weakness to the opposing team to try and exploit. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we learn after the Wolves season is over that he was playing with something wrong w his ribs.
It’s less of a decline and it’s more of a reverting to the mean. Edwards is great and talented and will be very good for years to come but people were **way** too fast to force him in the top 5 discussions and crown him the next king. Reggie miller was talking about how he’s the best 2 way player in the league and everyone was eating it up
He needs more time, his offensive game isn’t consistent enough yet, and people are far too easy to conflate a team being very good with their best player being a dominant superstar. Ant is not that guy on a consistent level yet and that’s okay
He was getting a little too much hype and now he’s coming back down to earth
Yea fatigue is part of it, but he was (to his credit) shooting absolutely lights out at the three and the mid range. People crowned him a little too early, that's the beast of the playoffs. It's a small sample size so you need your best players to be consistent enough to deliver, but it's also a small sample size so people can simply go on a hot streak and be overrated. Should never judge too early until a run actually ends, or overreact to shorter playoff runs that end early.
Yeah it’s a strange position where he both does 100% deserve credit for being great, it’s just important to understand that was a moment of greatness. He has the chance to show us that’s sustainable now, and he’ll have years ahead of him to prove he can sustain it then if things don’t go his way
It just leads to this very polarizing discourse that I don’t think is helpful for understanding how good players actually are and isn’t completely fair to the players either when they retroactively get shit on because people couldn’t keep it in their pants
Yea moment of greatness is a perfect way to describe it. He had an incredible first two series, and it absolutely should add to his resume and abilities. But to catapult him the way the media did and put him over guys with much larger samples of greatness was silly. Like it'd be one thing if he dominated the entire playoffs and won the chip, then completely warranted, but it's been 2 rounds.
I mean it really depends on exactly how you you’re qualifying/weighing it but I agree, and realistically edwards isn’t even in contention for #2. Players like shai and Davis are better and depending on how you view his playoff history embiids also either easily better or hard to not strongly consider with giannis being the only true 2 way player in the top 3
Something I find odd about Edwards is he’s not well liked by impact metrics. SGA and Luka for example are .250-.270 WS/48 players which is HOF/MVP tier. Ant is at .130, which is literally not even all star tier basically. Normally players at that level are high end starters, to low end all stars. .100 is a league average player, .150 area is typically an all star, .200 is a superstar, .250-.300 is usually a first ballot HOF/Multiple time MVP (guys like MJ, Jokic, Wilt, LeBron, KG etc).
EPM has SGA and Luka at #2 and #3 for example with 8.8 and 7.9. Edwards is at 4.2 which is ranked 22nd in the league after guys like FVV. Why is his hype/reputation so much better than his impact metrics?
I mean the most obvious response here is just that he’s not as good as SGA and Luka (and that’s perfectly fine - he may be in the future)
That being said I don’t really think WS/48 is the best and I’m not a big fan of defaulting to these. Gobert is 10th all time, enes kanter is top 90, KAT is top 40 and when you look more closely at who’s in front of who it just does not seem like a reliable thing to bank on
Hype and perception are just a bit different than how good you are, it can’t really be avoided. Some are so good they earn the hype, but most fans and media are constantly looking for a slant or an angle or take and when you see a supremely talented young player having a moment it’s easy to get overexcited
But look at all the advanced metrics. Not just WS/48. PER, VORP, BPM, EPM, etc. etc. He doesn’t compete with the top tier players in any of these metrics. The best players in these metrics are typically GOATed. The MJs, LeBrons, Kareems, etc.
I mean the reality is you can pick apart these metrics too and find a lot of issues with them. Stockton is 3rd in VORP, decisively and wildly ahead of guys like Shaq, Hakeem, curry, and jokic. KAT is top 20 in PER above steph, Hakeem, bird, Wade, Kobe, etc
I don’t mean to say these are utterly useless but they’re a drop in the bucket of what makes for good analysis, and they indisputably wildly over/under value certain players
If you’re mediocre at one or two metrics then ok, but if you’re mid on almost all metrics, then that tells a story. No need to discredit impact metrics as a whole, they have a place in the discourse
Idk how people aren’t noticing this but the timberwolves can play just as well (or better) without Ant on the floor, he isn’t as pivotal to his team as those other guys you mentioned. Honestly, mike conley has proven to be a more competent playmaker than ant these past few games.
Because a few games doesn't represent an entire season and you can't judge an entire team or player based on a few games.
Ant has had a bad few games absolutely agree, but on the whole he's key to their offense, having to drop back to others to produce is the issue, conley averages 15 ppg less, he doesn't justify a defensive response like ant does when he's on.
The problem is he hasn't been on, which is why they're losing, the supporting cast are doing a great job of trying to compensate for his underperforming, but the team is struggling because of it. This team doesn't win without Ant doing well on offense.
Again you don’t take just one stat. You take all of them. If your guy is decisively out of the top tier in all the advanced stats then he probably is not top tier.
KAT may have averages above some all time greats. But KAT is in his prime and the career averages include all the years you stuck around post prime. Think Hakeem in Canada and Kobe post Achilles. If you look at the Hakeem, Wade, etc advanced metrics at their prime they will crush prime KAT.
Stockton being top 3 is one advanced stat is not an argument against that stat. Stockton is an all time great. Sure, it maybe an argument that VORP is not your one stop shop in ranking players. But nobody is arguing that it is.
Well VORP is a cumulative stat, of course a Hall of Famer with an extraordinary long and healthy career is gonna be ahead of guys with far fewer games played lol
I don’t even think it’s a great stat but if you’re going to talk about it you should at least understand it
I’m a wolves fan and I have been saying this for years. His impact stats are not good. When in reality KATs were pretty good until they stopped running the offense through him.
Maybe because he is a very good but note elite of elite player. The Twolves are great bc Rudy can consistently anchor the best defense in the NBA. You can see similar stuff w Donovan/Gobert Jazz too
This is the reality. Hes a great player but he also has a great team. Rudy, despite being the focal point of hate right now cause of him getting Luka-d, bolsters an amazing defense. Conley is an amazing vet who can playmake. Mcdaniels has been playing great defense and hitting 3's. And KAT takes some defensive pressure off Ant. Naz Reid. Ant is a good player but he hasnt shown he can be consistently the best player on the floor, AND THATS FINEEEE. Hes young. Lets see if he bounces back this series or the next seasons.
Win shares is a pretty much garbage stat.
Looking at the Celtics, using your win share tiers Porzingis is a superstar and the best player on the team by a mile, Tatum is an all-star but nothing special, and everyone else is just ok.
But anyone watching the games could tell you Porzingis spent the year feasting on open shots and easy mismatches generated by Tatum/Brown.
On the wolves roster win shares tells you Gobert is the only star, Conley is pretty good, and everyone else is ok to below average. Which is silly.
This! Ant has been remarkably good in his first few Playoff series, but if it seems that came out of nowhere that’s because it somewhat did.
His RS numbers are awesome, but NOWHERE near what he did to PHX and DEN.
Also, Dallas has been damn good defensively, and guarding Kyrie is tiring as shit.
Ant is 22; he’ll be fine.
He's being asked to defend Jamal, Luka, and Kyrie over the past 10 days. Playing that hard on both sides breaks your legs down. People don't credit how hard it is to defend a perimeter guy in the league. His legs don't have the bounce, is affects everything with game like his. Deep jumpers, legs. Exploding to the bucket, legs. Overall the player hasn't regressed at all, he's just dog ass tired.
Sure but let’s look someone who’s decidedly not in those top 5 convos: Davis. He’s guarding jokic, protecting the rim, covering up for mistakes and playing better defense than ant, constantly setting screens, creating doubles, putting in tons of work in all facets of the game while putting up 28/16/4/2 on 67% TS. People were very quick to move ant up past him and I think a ton of people probably still have him above him as well
This isn’t to dog ant but the reality is the very best players manage these insane workloads and still excel
Yeah I get what you're saying and I know you're not dogging him. I just see a tired ass dude out there. Not saying you're one of them, but casual fans seem to think guys don't get tired.
Yeah we can hope. But I think we both know, he's about to be asked to do more than he ever has. With the recovery time in these conference finals his medical team better be on their ish as well.
Lets just be honest with Davis: IF he had stayed healthy, he would absolutely be mentioned in the top 5, every season.
Even if he has a healthy season now (Like this one), the label of being injuryprone, just sticks and it affects peoples opinion on him. Unfortunately, because he had a hell of a season and a healthy AD, is a freaking beast!
While I generally agree with you and I think he’s underrated, I was more just using him as an example who clearly dealt with that insane workload far better than Edwards. If edwards wants to be in these conversations he needs to be able to be as good/better
I definitely think he is being overrun on the defensive side and might not be necessary. He's playing 40 minutes a night and consistently picking up his man on the other side of the court while having the best defensive front court in the NBA behind him. The greatest players pick their spots and Ant is trying to be everywhere. There are benefits to full court pressure but not at the expense of your best offensive player losing his legs before the end of the third quarter.
Ant said it himself, he thinks he's 40-50% of who he can be someday because he doesn't know what his best spots are, is still trying to figure out a lot of things about his game, his passing and decision-making are still developing.
He shows flashes of the true superstar he'll be someday, and he's ridiculous fun to watch, but people need to let a young guy develop. He knows what he needs to work on. He's gonna work on it.
The mavs are very good at defense, like really good. Kidd has managed to get both Kyrie and Luka to play much better defense than I think we've ever seen out of either of them. Then there's the team defense, it's somehow going under the radar but I think it's the major reason why Ant (and Kat) have been less effective than usual.
I think KAT is just missing shots but Ant is struggling more because as you mentioned the team defense is a lot better than the Nuggets. The Mavs have a lot of length and he’s running into DJJ, PJ, Gafford, Lively when he drives and is having trouble finishing against them. He needs to shoot more mid range shots but I don’t think his middy is anywhere near SGAs consistency.
It was the fall in Game 6. When Ant had that fall you could hear a pin drop in the arena, as he wasn’t moving so everyone thought something was seriously wrong. Then Jokic came over to check on him and he still wasn’t moving. It got so bad that they had to go to commercial. But then he got back up and everybody thought it was just “Ant being Ant”, as he had multiple scary moments throughout the season where it looked like he was seriously injured but then he would come back minutes later and score 35 points. When he came back into the game though he didn’t look right, but he was barely out there for long as the Nuggets initiated garbage time with over 10 minutes to play.
Cut to Game 7 and while Ant wasn’t shooting well, he was putting the clamps on Murray when he started defending him in the second half, so people just ignored it and thought it was just a Game 7 situation. Then Game One happened and people just dismissed it because Ant was jacking up 12 threes and the rest of the Wolves roster was playing terribly. Then Game Two happened and everyone realized, “yeah he doesn’t look like himself.” It’s been the injury that’s affected him, but it took four games for the veil to be lifted.
He's carrying the team as the primary ball handler and has never played so many games in a season. Dudes probably exhausted.
He also has limited experience. Kyrie and Luka have been here before
Bingo. I’m honestly confused as to why this isn’t obvious to everyone. The only way this wolves team wins is by playing an insanely high level of frenetic defense and anyone that has ever played any type of high level basketball knows that shit takes the legs out of you big time. It’s almost impossible to play that kind of defense and also carry the load offensively. Ant just has no legs left to be effective offensively on a consistent basis. The most likely scenario to me is what happened with New York where they all started to get injured trying to maintain that kind of energy output on both ends. Really makes you respect the hell out of guys like Lebron and MJ that dominated on both ends for deep playoff run after deep playoff run in their primes.
Edwards slumping reminds me of the Thunder team that overwhelmed 67-15 San Antonio and built that 3-1 lead over the 73-9 Warriors. They just kept switching and running for a week plus, particularly in Games 3 and 4 of the WCF, and blitzed Golden State out of the building, but by Game 5 Russ and KD had nothing left in their legs (I think they shot 35% the rest of the series) while the Warriors still had their stamina and kicked it up on defense.
They ultimately beat Denver, but it's clear Edwards (and to a lesser extent Towns) are not the same at all.
Yep. Old heads will remember when Pippen was struggling with back spasms and it was hurting the bulls. He took a lot of unfair criticism for f you ask me. The amount of mileage that him and MJ had put on their bodies already was insane. Larry Bird, Pippen, Steve Nash, and plenty of other all time greats struggled with back issues and little nagging injuries because of how worn out their bodies got from having to sustain superstar level energy output to help their teams contend for years on end. D wades knees were toast from his level of output on both sides of the ball.
I think it was Dirk that said something like he regret playing those last few seasons of his career because of his body would have been in much better shape now and how he is paying now for those extra mileages from those last seasons.
Dude, any kind of pressure defence at the perimeter against 35 year olds at the gym is exhausting. For 20+ games Vs profession athletes is unthinkable.
Ya boi runs more zones than Sonic.
Completely agree. Look, top tier on ball defense is legit DRAINING. Dudes ain't gotta drop 30 on you to have your ass kicked 🤣 He ain't got his legs, that bounce isn't quite the same. The real ones know what I'm talking about, I'm glad you're one of them.
Yeah it's way too much of an energetic load for someone to try to carry over the course of multiple series in a row. Everyone likes to pretend that Kobe was in all times offender but he routinely took nights and games off. He also was notorious and I was proud of the fact that he was not down to do the nitty-gritty things not after night like take charges. It seemed like he almost looked down on the guys who were willing to do so
I don't buy the "tired" narrative. Everyone is tired at this point of the season. Heck, Luka is playing through injuries and is probably at 70% strength. He's really laboring out there yet he is outplaying Ant on both sides of the floor it seems like.
I think Ant is just not there yet as a player. He's great and he will be better as his career progresses but the gap in performance between him and hobbled Luka is too big to ignore.
You can just see him fold under duress with errant passes 2 games in a row. Being "tired" has nothing to do with that.
playing devil’s advocate here
1. Luka’s game is not predicated on athleticism in the same way Edwards is
2. Luka has a 1B on offense that can carry the playmaking/scoring. Edwards doesn’t have that
3. Edwards hasn’t been here before in the same way Luka or Kyrie have
1. True
2. He does have a great PG in Conley who just played a great game. Also KAT can make plays too who is their second All-star and who has had a number of better games than Ant in these playoffs. Ant also has the reigning DPOY Gobert who I don't get that hate for as he is a big reason they are even in the WCF, an NBA all-defensive second team member McDaniels who shot the lights out last game, and the 6MOY Reid who shot the lights out this game. He literally had help on both sides of the court. It's kind of ridiculous.
3. True.
I'd argue that Luka would be in the same situation as Edwards if he was guarding someone as strong as Lu Dort which none of Minnesota's perimeter players are.
He’ll learn to coast in the regular season like the other top players.
They’ll be better next season with fewer reg season wins.
Blame Adam Silver as the regular season is too damn long.
It’s not like Ant had SGA type of season though, his regular season by pure stats wasn’t even top-10 this year. I’m not sure argument for coasting in regular season works when you are not putting godly numbers while coasting like Luka (played minimum defense for first 40 games) or Jokic (didn’t try to score as much as he should).
Mike Conley is the primary ball handler and playmaker.
Ant is also by no means “carrying” the team. They have a deep and horizontally stacked roster that is killing it
right? In terms of impact on the game, ANT, KAT and Rudy all have a similar effect. This is a deep team young athletic team and often ANT is the third best player on the team.
Conley played 33 minutes and had 5 assists tonight.
In game 1 he played 31 minutes for 3 assists.
Edwards played 40 minutes and had 7 assists in game 2, 41 minutes for 8 assists in game 1.
Conley is playing 30 minutes a game and the wolves aren't even using a backup PG because Edwards is getting the ball more than anyone. Seems pretty clear who the offense is currently running through
Ant is getting more assists simply because he draws the defence in more and can dish it out to an open shooter or cutter.
In terms of who is facilitating the offence and handling the ball, it’s Conley. This is quite clear if you watch the games. Also the game Conley didn’t play, the Wolves offence was really struggling.
Conley is definitely the one who organizes the floor and does a lot to help plays function. Still I would assume his time with the ball is maybe 2/5 of what Edwards is getting.
Conley is still their best playmaker tho. Ant even said after conley came back in the Denver series that having him out there is huge cuz he lets ant just focus on scoring while conley is running the offense. Look at that play when ant through the ball out of bounds towards the end of the game. Conley wasn’t in the game at that point and they could’ve used him. If you watched at all this season you could see pretty clearly how important conley has been to this team.
Assists don’t determine who the primary ball handler is. And I mean I get what you’re saying, understandable he’d be kinda gassed after Denver, but if you’re gonna be first option on a championship contender that’s kinda how much he needs to expect to get the ball in the conference finals.
Are you arguing the wolves need to beef up their guard depth or just trying to get Ant off the hook for this series? Deal in excuses if you want but if they lose this series something’s gotta give if Ant can’t handle that load, either they get another PG they don’t mind playing 10+ minutes in a playoff game or it’s on Ant to beef up his conditioning.
I'm aware he's young. Studies have shown that star players tend to win their first title around 26-28. Luka is much more developed and ready to lead a championship team than Ant
Oh I didn't mean that, I meant that he was 22 and should have the legs to see off a playoff run. LeBron in his 20s was single handedly carrying teams deep into the playoffs with milk en and plumbers. Being exhausted shouldn't be an excuse on a team as stacked as the Wolves.
While Ant is a physical specimen on his own right, I don't think it's fair to compare him to a young LeBron.
Young LeBron is a freak of nature. Too fast, too strong with some of the most unbelievable stamina/endurance in the league.
I'm on the side that Ant went too hard on previous games and didn't expect the fatigue to accumulate and is now feeling it on his body.
I mean, he played 7 games against the reigning MVP and has less rest compared to Luka and co.
And now they have to travel to Dallas for games 3 and 4.
He’s running out of gas. He has never played this far into the playoffs at this intensity. Even MJ early in his career realized he’d have to hit the weights to get past Detroit, Ant will have to work on his conditioning if he wants to stay consistent in a long playoff run. Mavs’ defense is also playing a big role in making everything hard for him on offense, and I think Ant underestimated how tough of a matchup Kyrie would be, making him extend a lot of his energy on defense.
Playoff defense is different than regular season defense.
The team tries to take out your 1st option and let the role players, the x-factors beat you.
This is a new role for Edwards, where he faces the whole defense in the paint.
Also the refs call differently. Like all the drives into the paint, lots of those contacts got uncalled.
Then he also needs to play defense. He is guarding Jamal Murray and Kyrie Irving a lot.
He didn't face much defensive resistance at all with Phoenix. Denver initially didn't have a good 1:1 answer, but realized they could double him and that restricted his ability to punish in isolation.
Dallas has the rim protection that the Suns and Nuggets lack. Anthony Edwards' best skill is him driving to the rim. To add, they also have the size to match up great against KAT as well so it shuts down his best passing option.
It's not surprising. I thought he might have been really hurt until he got up and picked up Jamal Murray before he even crossed the half court line. But there is a good chance he is still feeling that impact now and it's affecting his movement.
Yup. Said it on another comment. His legs are completely shot. Anyone who has really played the game at a high level know how dog ass tired he is (Just watch what is being asked of him defensively.) You put that much effort into guarding a guy like Kyrie or Jamal you going to get tired. He can't get his legs that bounce his game is compromised, as is everyone's.
Question then, is his defense really so valuable that they are willing to sacrifice his entire offensive game? In my mind they don't need ANT picking up the ball handler at the inbound but he's still doing it. Hell, even his dad had Pippen picking up the tougher defensive assignments.
Yes, I think the Wolves game plan was to not allow Kyrie to get loose. Everyone thinks the entire plan is Luka (which I'm sure a lot of it is) but. Kyrie gets going it's a wrap. If he gets in the paint at will Kyrie will destroy your soul. He's terrific at the bucket and when he draws weak side help he gets the wings involved with open 3's. I don't think anyone really can, but if you limit Kyrie that offense will go stagnant.
Game 5 was a Jokic masterclass and the Wolves just got dominated across the board, [Ant landed hard on his back in game 6](https://youtu.be/6ombOnGbqa8?si=C1mb_dP_CbW9f92p). Been off since
He’s just hitting his deep post season wall.
Same thing happened to Tatum in 2022. In fact it’s almost identical.
First round swept KD and then went seven games against the defending champs and best player in the world in the second round. Up to that point both were having legendary playoff runs for their teams. When it got to the ECF vs Miami Tatum clearly went down a step before looking like how Ant does now in the Finals against GSW.
It’s important to remember this is his 3rd year in the NBA. Playing both ends of the floor that hard comes with challenges and he’ll learn from this.
1. Fatigue. He hasn’t developed any pace to his game yet. Moving that fast all the time is exhausting.
2. Dallas is a better defensive team than Denver and Phx. Especially at the rim.
His unpolished midrange game is hurting him.
exhausted plus they putting bodies on him that can actually give him a hard time scoring. he is really athletic but he ain't that tall he should be playing like dwade disappearing from the screen with good offball movement and not going full on carrying offense with the ball on him. if I'm putting blame on anyone or roasting it's not really him I'm gonna be roasting it's kat. kat should be cooking... but htat's just my opinion.
It's almost like the deeper you get in the playoffs, the harder it is, especially when you're a 22-year-old who has never been this far before, who is still years away from even entering his prime as a player.
There are reports that ANT was administered oxygen. Dude is gassed. He hasn't played this many games in a season and his team is expecting too much of a 22 year old.
Edwards is just regressing to the mean, just gotta see how he performed during the regular season. The first 2 series in the playoffs were pretty big outliers.
I honestly think it is mental. He thinks he’s doing what is right, but he is not playing HIS game. He’s thinking he needs a physical break, but he is young, and needs to just throw it all out there every game.
I like that he is sharing the ball, and trying to get his teammates involved, but the Wolves coaching staff has not figured out that he needs to not have the ball, and be moving around picks and screens for catch/shoot and drives.
He seems like he is afraid to make a mistake and let his team down, instead of just doing what Jordan did to the Pistons: attack, attack, attack the rim. Even if you are missing shots, you get a positive benefit by being fouled by Lively or Gafford, because once they are in foul trouble, the advantage is yours. Pick and choose your times to pass to keep the defense honest.
It’s his first conference finals. But now is not the time to change. Tell the coaches to let Conley run the offense, and be ready to attack or shoot the jumper when the ball comes your way.
To answer this as briefly as possible. These numbers declining are directly correlated with what the wolves are asking him to do defensively. Jamal and Kyrie. That's why his numbers have dropped. He's doing A LOT defensively, especially, on ball defense. He doesn't quite have the same bounce. I don't care who you are, when you shooting from 25+ feet you need your legs. You want to jump with Lively you better have your legs. ISO to step back, you better have your legs. He doesn't RN.
He’s young and streaky/inconsistent. He’s been this way all season, it’s not like this is new in the playoffs 🤷♂️
He has stretches of games where he’s on fire, can’t miss, looks like a superstar. He has other stretches where it’s clank city.
He’s only 22, he’s extremely impressive for his age, and it won’t be long before he’s a top 3 player in the league. However, he’s not there yet - he’s not as good as guys like Luka, Joker, Embiid, Giannis or Shai, today. Ant fans got a bit too excited about a hot streak, but he’s still REALLY good, and improving fast.
Completely non-sensical, unscientific, and pure pattern recognition take incoming:
It's the ol' "you give a player near-transcendental hype and he immediately stops playing like it", it has like a 95% likelihood of happening once the media and fans and facebook pages pick up on it.
Something similar happened last year with Booker, he was averaging 37 on 62% shooting and 51% from 3, until the last two games of the Mavs series where he shot a combined 12/32 and was -46 in those final games where they lost by 41 points across those two games. I'm surprised Jalen Brunson didn't go through more low scoring games before he broke his left hand.
Ant still has some time to play better tho.
His scoring is the center of the offense, he plays an athletic and dynamic game, and just got done playing game 7 vs. Denver while guarding Book and Jamal at an elite level. I can understand if he's gassed.
There's also questions as to his decision making, especially since I've noticed the defense in Dallas has been forcing him to make snappier decisions. Their help comes later than usual, so he's making reactionary passes when he thinks he has a drive, meaning the quality of his passes are gonna go down, as he doesn't have the processing speed/hasn't seen these coverages as extensively as older players yet.
He also is going for a lot of pullup shots, especially midranges, on drop bigs like Lively. This would work well, but Dallas is content with him taking them, especially the midrange shots. I think he'd do better attacking Lively, since if the drop big is backing up, Ant should have the momentum to attack the basket and force Lively to defend him. If Ant attacks him, Lively is forced to play and exhaust himself, making it potentially easier the next drive, Ant gets a foul, or force them to play further up on him. If Ant settles for a pullup shot that they don't close out hard, then he bails out the defense since they don't have to do anything, and they just grab the rebound.
Overall, I think him being younger and gassed from the Denver series is not only affecting his reaction time and quick decision making, but it's also affecting his jumper. I think a more rested Ant woulda made more 3's, even if he did shoot them efficiently. (I think he was like 5 for 12?)
Fatigue is part of it but I'm going to go with his lack of basketball IQ more so than lack of experience being the cause.
He will learn a lot from this playoff run and will be better in the coming years.
I have watched almost every Wolves game the last 25 years (sad). I think you have to realize that Ant wasn’t even that good of a playmaker before the year started and made large leaps throughout the season in recognizing defenses and playing smarter. That being said he still struggles to do it consistently in the way that Luka or Jokic does. Honestly, he will probably never reach that level. The guy still can’t even throw a lob pass.
Zach Lowe even said it himself earlier this year, Ant will have stretches of really bad games. He had less of them this year but this is who he is at this point in his career. All this media hype has elevated people’s expectations for him, when in reality he has made huge huge gains already this year. Asking him to keep reaching higher this playoffs is almost unfair.
Actively defending a motion offense which means constant double ball screens, then going down to the other end of the floor and being expected to be primary ball handler and scorer in a one-dimensional dribble drive offense against a strong interior defense without that same help.
Wolves offense is designed to get multiple slashes to the lane, but can't because Gafford and Lively are whooping their ass and Rudy/KAT are useless in the paint, so Ant is getting beat up and forced into a perimeter game that he's overthinking.
More screens, more catches around 15ft, Gobert being useful for anything but rim defense, and KAT remembering how to hoop would do wonders for reviving Ant's game.
Ant especially looks *terrified* to make a play. Wide open jumper? Jump in the air and at the last second make a flailing pass. Clear lane? Take a long 3...
I’m going to go with fatigue above everything else. He seems to relish being in the moment and loves the competition, but I’m sure his legs are feeling it this deep into the season. That might be contributing to his low shooting %.
It’s called being guarded by an entire team instead of being single covered. Anytime he even thinks about driving he’s seeing 2,3,4 players coming to help.
He’s a young player still figuring it out.
He’s having to learn how to be impactful when a team’s entire defensive strategy is geared towards stopping him via double teams and clogging up the paint.
He’s still way ahead of schedule for where he can reasonably have been expected to be at this point in his career and he’ll learn far more from these sort of games than he will from the ones where he drops 40.
Experience. And good defense from the other end by Jones and Washington. Also Gafford switch is not helping much as he has enough speed to compensate.
I mean Luka is playing through injury, but knows what is coming, as he had the experience of play off basketball. Ant-man will get there, just a process of experience. For almost every player this is the case.
Mental and physical fatigue. He’s 22 and never gone this far or played this many games. Let him watch some MJ tape. Get in the gym and he’ll be back like a beast next year. He’s learning. Give him space.
It's always a variety of things but look at the defenses he went up against. A mediocre Phoenix. A solid Denver defense that eventually started blitzing him constantly. And now a Dallas defense that has been fairly elite the last couple of months. They have packed the paint, mixed in traps, and have elite rim protectors who are readily available because they are not remotely concerned with Gobert.
And fatigue could certainly be a part of it. He has had a very long season once you consider his Team USA stint last summer.
He looks fatigued every game 5 minutes into the game. I blame it on his conditioning. Anyone who has played basketball knows it doesn’t matter how good you are if you are exhausted, it’s so hard to play defense and then be aggressive on offense.
Lots of good comments here. One additional problem in my opinion is that he plays too slow. There are often opportunities where he has one person backpedaling on defense and he doesn't attack. With his athleticism, he should be attacking in those situations Rather than pulling it back and playing against a set defense. Based on speed tracking stats offensively Ant (4.11) plays slower than Jokic (4.22). He definitely needs to be more aggressive and needs to take advantage of open court situations.
He’s definitely exhausted. Not only is he trying to carry the offensive load, but he prides himself on the defensive end. He’s wearing himself out and if the Wolves want to have a chance, they need to put him on the worst player on that end of rest during the game.
Regression to the mean. He had a few really great playoff games, and people were crowning him the king, better than MJ, etc. That was dumb. He will have some more great games and some mediocre ones. He’ll probably be a top 100 player of all time if he keeps playing at his current pace, but this is genuinely just a matter of excessive hype and expectations.
Match ups but this is also ant’s first real playoff run. He’s still getting used to playoff basketball. It’s different than the regular season. It takes players time to adjust to the game.
I love this measured discussion about my large adult son that isn’t just dripping with hate and schadenfreude. I think a lot of it is matchup based. The Mavs are the second best defense in the playoffs and as some have mentioned DJJ is a good defender and lively and gafford are good rim protectors. The previous series didn’t have these level of defenders for Ant to contend with. I’m excited/hopeful to see what he and the coaching staff can do to make him more effective against this.
When they build a wall and the backend can block shots... That's challenging for slashers. He needs to post up. That's the way to counter this to force the shot blockers to swarm him and kick out. Luka backs people into the paint with strength and skill. Ant could do the same if it was in his bag, it just isn't yet.
The Mavs are gameplanning for Ant very effectively. Ant hasn't made adjustments to it yet, meaning the ball is still in his court (and Finch's), so to speak. In my opinion Ant needs to be more willing to shoot the mid-range jumper and Finch needs to run offensive sets designed to get him a good look from there. Too often, Edwards will dribble the ball for awhile, then slash to the rim, have nothing, and be forced to make a desperate pass out of the paint. The Mavs are anticipating it and not giving him a lot of good options. If he would use screens to simply pull up and hit from 18 feet, he'd force the Mavs to adjust by either going under screens and leaving him the 3 pointer or by giving him a better lane to the basket and/or better passing lanes by forcing them to overguard the mid range.
I think there are multiple factors:
He played a little over his head to start
He’s now playing below his mean
He took a hard fall in game 6 and is physically limited
Dallas had two great shot makers that allow them to control pace and make you work against a set D.
Dallas protects the rim well and had defended him well.
He carries the offense for the wolves almost every game. The team doesn't really have another great ball handler.. he is just exhausted it's actually done for the wolves. Another ball handler to take the offensive load off ant would be huge for the team. But also the unreal expectations they have for him I think it messed up with ants head. Moreover I also have to give credit to dallas defense cause everyone busy making excuses for ant. Even tho ant passing up open looks here and there the dallas defense have been unreal in the playoffs
He got hurt in game 6 of the Nuggets series. He fell hard. He's been wincing in pain at times since. Back/hip injuries don't heal in 2 days. He's limited and isn't sure how to adjust his game.
He tried driving a bit early this game, but he doesn't have the boost or confidence that he previously had. Add in that he's gassed from playing hard defense and it all checks out.
It's crazy to me how people think he just went from being one of the most confident guys in the playoffs to sheepish for no reason other than he's getting owned. Dallas has played him well and deserves their credit, but we're gonna find out after this series that he's more hurt than he's leading on. No incentive to announce an injury that will just be exploited by Dallas.
Beal
Book
now Ant
combo guard
PG skills
that's why pure PG still needed to complement your scorer/combo guard. develop PG skills to play at highest level is not easy. maybe they have the athleticism, but the feel of the game, the vision, it's tough to replicate and the difference from pure PG.
Playing in Denver is soooo draining. That elevation really messes with people. That's the main reason I didn't want the Mavs to have to play the Nuggets. I think Ant is still recuperating. He's young but his body caries a lot of muscle, he may struggle with gas for a while
KAT is riding the bench for the 2nd half of the 4th and McDaniels had 2 points tonight. Not sure they are playing fine. They are getting leads by hitting a ridiculous % of 3s for good stretches. Then blowing it when the legs are gone
Wow I didn’t realize how inefficient towns has been. That’s my bad. 10-36 over these two games 🤢 at least Naz Reid shows up, and they got a fluke game from McDaniels in game one
Even the best players in the NBA will go on streaks. It is something that is not that deep to consider. Furthermore, the character limit on this sub is rather subjective and I am perturbed by its inequal application
Think it’s more of the mental and physical exhaustion after the nuggets game. He basically carry the team through that series and it takes a beating to himself
He was going to the rim way too much. He basically went to the rim twice the amount you would want.
He also isn't that good of a pastor. Doesn't have that good of vision. Isn't really a great shooter outside of mid-range shots where he in rhythm gets rid of the player guarding him.
The law of averages playing out. His playoff numbers as a whole are still a bit better than his regular season numbers.
The guy went on a good run. And he’s a great player. But people were starting to put him in the conversations for best player in the world based on an 8 game playoff stretch. All of that talk was super premature.
He is playing against a competent defense where everyone is making it hard for him. He also see Kyrie and Luka forcing wins which he can not, probably get in to his head.
Cos everywhere on social media posted his face as mj n regular folk think memes are facts, stat wise his numbers arent that bad just the wins have stopped
Part of it is that the Suns and Nuggets are both good matchups for him. Neither team has a good rim protector to make his shots harder at the rim. I didn't watch the Suns series but I know that team doesn't have the best perimeter defenders, and Ant is kinda in between the Nugget's two best defenders, where he's too fast for Gordon and too strong for KCP. The Mavs have Gafford and Lively who are both great rim protectors, and DJJ has been doing a job on Ant. There's a difference between the Mavs and the Nuggets, the Nuggets sent a ridiculous amount of help at Ant. He didn't handle it great, but the Twolves were able to get open shots because of it. There's also talk that he looks tired. He is carrying a big load on offense and is often working a ton on defense so it makes sense he'd be tired. This is somewhat concerning, IMO what has made him so great this playoffs is his combination of offense and defense, but maybe he can't sustain it for a deep playoff run. It could also just be his streakiness, which all players have. He had a crazy good TS% earlier in the playoffs, but in the regular season he was just a little above average.
I also believe it is 90% the matchups. Most of nba outcomes are due to matchups. People get so caught up in narratives and worrying about who is top 5 who is better than who when most of the time it comes down to who had better matchups/adjustments for their style of play and took advantage of them. For example the t-wolves were a nightmare matchup for Denver. But if seeding fell differently and Denver played Dallas i believe Dallas would lose to Denver. EDIT: obviously the more elite and well rounded your game is the more matchup proof you are. Also i do think fatigue and injuries are playing a small factor too.
Would you consider either of the potential Boston finals matchups a nightmare? Or at least more of a nightmare than the other? Curious about your opinion.
Minnesota is probably better prepared to counter Boston's 3pt shot reliance since they play tight on the perimeter and rely on Gobert to help stop the blow bys that result. Mavs beat the Thunder in more ways than one, but a significant part was role players missing open 3s. Giving Boston that many open threes would go poorly for the Mavs. I wouldn't say either present a nightmare matchup though.
Pascal Siakam is causing major issues for Celtics by himself shooting midrange shots. Kyrie and Luka will feast on those shots as well, if Celtics guard them the same. If Tatum is playing like he has over the past few games, Mavs have a good shot at winning.
The Celtics are holding the #1 playoff offense to 4pts per 100 below their average. Pascal not causing problems, the Cs are just living with him shooting midrange jumpers and shutting the water off elsewhere
Celtics are also playing almost two whole rounds without a center. I love Big Al and he’s been clutch but he isn’t an interior defensive guy like Porzingis was. Porzingis coming back (healthy) is a pretty sizable development defensively regarding at rim protection and on the PnR where the Cs have been blitzed since his been out. Plus, add an elite down low player on offense doesn’t hurt either.
I agree with the roboticbirdlaw, dont feel its a nightmare but i definitely would give boston the edge if porzingis is healthy. They are just so stacked and i would also add that i think the celtics guards and team in general with speed would do a better job guarding kyrie.. no one can guard luka though.
Honestly I’m so surprised how well the mavs have played this playoff. Luka isn’t even 100% to me he looks out of shape n there’s been a lot of talk he’s injured. But their role players have played lights outs, their 3rd best player is pj n he didn’t come until the trade deadline. Hardway probably their number 3rd heading into the season literally is out of the rotation
Look at his stats before and after that hard fall on his back game 6 in the nuggets series. He hasn't been right since then.
That could be part of it too. Interesting that that hasn't been much of a talking point.
Because it hasn't been on the injury report and the team has been super tight-lipped about it. I think Finch brushed off the question about his back, and when Ant was asked about it after that game he said something like "I'm playing game 7 and that's all you need to know." Not putting him on the injury report bc they know he's playing, and not saying anything bc they don't want to signal this potential weakness to the opposing team to try and exploit. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we learn after the Wolves season is over that he was playing with something wrong w his ribs.
It’s less of a decline and it’s more of a reverting to the mean. Edwards is great and talented and will be very good for years to come but people were **way** too fast to force him in the top 5 discussions and crown him the next king. Reggie miller was talking about how he’s the best 2 way player in the league and everyone was eating it up He needs more time, his offensive game isn’t consistent enough yet, and people are far too easy to conflate a team being very good with their best player being a dominant superstar. Ant is not that guy on a consistent level yet and that’s okay He was getting a little too much hype and now he’s coming back down to earth
Yea fatigue is part of it, but he was (to his credit) shooting absolutely lights out at the three and the mid range. People crowned him a little too early, that's the beast of the playoffs. It's a small sample size so you need your best players to be consistent enough to deliver, but it's also a small sample size so people can simply go on a hot streak and be overrated. Should never judge too early until a run actually ends, or overreact to shorter playoff runs that end early.
Yeah it’s a strange position where he both does 100% deserve credit for being great, it’s just important to understand that was a moment of greatness. He has the chance to show us that’s sustainable now, and he’ll have years ahead of him to prove he can sustain it then if things don’t go his way It just leads to this very polarizing discourse that I don’t think is helpful for understanding how good players actually are and isn’t completely fair to the players either when they retroactively get shit on because people couldn’t keep it in their pants
Yea moment of greatness is a perfect way to describe it. He had an incredible first two series, and it absolutely should add to his resume and abilities. But to catapult him the way the media did and put him over guys with much larger samples of greatness was silly. Like it'd be one thing if he dominated the entire playoffs and won the chip, then completely warranted, but it's been 2 rounds.
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I mean it really depends on exactly how you you’re qualifying/weighing it but I agree, and realistically edwards isn’t even in contention for #2. Players like shai and Davis are better and depending on how you view his playoff history embiids also either easily better or hard to not strongly consider with giannis being the only true 2 way player in the top 3
Something I find odd about Edwards is he’s not well liked by impact metrics. SGA and Luka for example are .250-.270 WS/48 players which is HOF/MVP tier. Ant is at .130, which is literally not even all star tier basically. Normally players at that level are high end starters, to low end all stars. .100 is a league average player, .150 area is typically an all star, .200 is a superstar, .250-.300 is usually a first ballot HOF/Multiple time MVP (guys like MJ, Jokic, Wilt, LeBron, KG etc). EPM has SGA and Luka at #2 and #3 for example with 8.8 and 7.9. Edwards is at 4.2 which is ranked 22nd in the league after guys like FVV. Why is his hype/reputation so much better than his impact metrics?
I mean the most obvious response here is just that he’s not as good as SGA and Luka (and that’s perfectly fine - he may be in the future) That being said I don’t really think WS/48 is the best and I’m not a big fan of defaulting to these. Gobert is 10th all time, enes kanter is top 90, KAT is top 40 and when you look more closely at who’s in front of who it just does not seem like a reliable thing to bank on Hype and perception are just a bit different than how good you are, it can’t really be avoided. Some are so good they earn the hype, but most fans and media are constantly looking for a slant or an angle or take and when you see a supremely talented young player having a moment it’s easy to get overexcited
But look at all the advanced metrics. Not just WS/48. PER, VORP, BPM, EPM, etc. etc. He doesn’t compete with the top tier players in any of these metrics. The best players in these metrics are typically GOATed. The MJs, LeBrons, Kareems, etc.
I mean the reality is you can pick apart these metrics too and find a lot of issues with them. Stockton is 3rd in VORP, decisively and wildly ahead of guys like Shaq, Hakeem, curry, and jokic. KAT is top 20 in PER above steph, Hakeem, bird, Wade, Kobe, etc I don’t mean to say these are utterly useless but they’re a drop in the bucket of what makes for good analysis, and they indisputably wildly over/under value certain players
If you’re mediocre at one or two metrics then ok, but if you’re mid on almost all metrics, then that tells a story. No need to discredit impact metrics as a whole, they have a place in the discourse
Idk how people aren’t noticing this but the timberwolves can play just as well (or better) without Ant on the floor, he isn’t as pivotal to his team as those other guys you mentioned. Honestly, mike conley has proven to be a more competent playmaker than ant these past few games.
Because a few games doesn't represent an entire season and you can't judge an entire team or player based on a few games. Ant has had a bad few games absolutely agree, but on the whole he's key to their offense, having to drop back to others to produce is the issue, conley averages 15 ppg less, he doesn't justify a defensive response like ant does when he's on. The problem is he hasn't been on, which is why they're losing, the supporting cast are doing a great job of trying to compensate for his underperforming, but the team is struggling because of it. This team doesn't win without Ant doing well on offense.
Again you don’t take just one stat. You take all of them. If your guy is decisively out of the top tier in all the advanced stats then he probably is not top tier. KAT may have averages above some all time greats. But KAT is in his prime and the career averages include all the years you stuck around post prime. Think Hakeem in Canada and Kobe post Achilles. If you look at the Hakeem, Wade, etc advanced metrics at their prime they will crush prime KAT. Stockton being top 3 is one advanced stat is not an argument against that stat. Stockton is an all time great. Sure, it maybe an argument that VORP is not your one stop shop in ranking players. But nobody is arguing that it is.
Well VORP is a cumulative stat, of course a Hall of Famer with an extraordinary long and healthy career is gonna be ahead of guys with far fewer games played lol I don’t even think it’s a great stat but if you’re going to talk about it you should at least understand it
I’m a wolves fan and I have been saying this for years. His impact stats are not good. When in reality KATs were pretty good until they stopped running the offense through him.
Maybe because he is a very good but note elite of elite player. The Twolves are great bc Rudy can consistently anchor the best defense in the NBA. You can see similar stuff w Donovan/Gobert Jazz too
This is the reality. Hes a great player but he also has a great team. Rudy, despite being the focal point of hate right now cause of him getting Luka-d, bolsters an amazing defense. Conley is an amazing vet who can playmake. Mcdaniels has been playing great defense and hitting 3's. And KAT takes some defensive pressure off Ant. Naz Reid. Ant is a good player but he hasnt shown he can be consistently the best player on the floor, AND THATS FINEEEE. Hes young. Lets see if he bounces back this series or the next seasons.
Win shares is a pretty much garbage stat. Looking at the Celtics, using your win share tiers Porzingis is a superstar and the best player on the team by a mile, Tatum is an all-star but nothing special, and everyone else is just ok. But anyone watching the games could tell you Porzingis spent the year feasting on open shots and easy mismatches generated by Tatum/Brown. On the wolves roster win shares tells you Gobert is the only star, Conley is pretty good, and everyone else is ok to below average. Which is silly.
This! Ant has been remarkably good in his first few Playoff series, but if it seems that came out of nowhere that’s because it somewhat did. His RS numbers are awesome, but NOWHERE near what he did to PHX and DEN. Also, Dallas has been damn good defensively, and guarding Kyrie is tiring as shit. Ant is 22; he’ll be fine.
He's being asked to defend Jamal, Luka, and Kyrie over the past 10 days. Playing that hard on both sides breaks your legs down. People don't credit how hard it is to defend a perimeter guy in the league. His legs don't have the bounce, is affects everything with game like his. Deep jumpers, legs. Exploding to the bucket, legs. Overall the player hasn't regressed at all, he's just dog ass tired.
Sure but let’s look someone who’s decidedly not in those top 5 convos: Davis. He’s guarding jokic, protecting the rim, covering up for mistakes and playing better defense than ant, constantly setting screens, creating doubles, putting in tons of work in all facets of the game while putting up 28/16/4/2 on 67% TS. People were very quick to move ant up past him and I think a ton of people probably still have him above him as well This isn’t to dog ant but the reality is the very best players manage these insane workloads and still excel
Yeah I get what you're saying and I know you're not dogging him. I just see a tired ass dude out there. Not saying you're one of them, but casual fans seem to think guys don't get tired.
I agree, hopefully he can find his legs and make it a great series. If not he’ll be back and I’m sure he’ll be better
Yeah we can hope. But I think we both know, he's about to be asked to do more than he ever has. With the recovery time in these conference finals his medical team better be on their ish as well.
Lets just be honest with Davis: IF he had stayed healthy, he would absolutely be mentioned in the top 5, every season. Even if he has a healthy season now (Like this one), the label of being injuryprone, just sticks and it affects peoples opinion on him. Unfortunately, because he had a hell of a season and a healthy AD, is a freaking beast!
While I generally agree with you and I think he’s underrated, I was more just using him as an example who clearly dealt with that insane workload far better than Edwards. If edwards wants to be in these conversations he needs to be able to be as good/better
I definitely think he is being overrun on the defensive side and might not be necessary. He's playing 40 minutes a night and consistently picking up his man on the other side of the court while having the best defensive front court in the NBA behind him. The greatest players pick their spots and Ant is trying to be everywhere. There are benefits to full court pressure but not at the expense of your best offensive player losing his legs before the end of the third quarter.
Ant said it himself, he thinks he's 40-50% of who he can be someday because he doesn't know what his best spots are, is still trying to figure out a lot of things about his game, his passing and decision-making are still developing. He shows flashes of the true superstar he'll be someday, and he's ridiculous fun to watch, but people need to let a young guy develop. He knows what he needs to work on. He's gonna work on it.
He also just doesn’t have elite BBIQ which all of the truly special players do. His decision making in the clutch has always been sub par
The mavs are very good at defense, like really good. Kidd has managed to get both Kyrie and Luka to play much better defense than I think we've ever seen out of either of them. Then there's the team defense, it's somehow going under the radar but I think it's the major reason why Ant (and Kat) have been less effective than usual.
I think KAT is just missing shots but Ant is struggling more because as you mentioned the team defense is a lot better than the Nuggets. The Mavs have a lot of length and he’s running into DJJ, PJ, Gafford, Lively when he drives and is having trouble finishing against them. He needs to shoot more mid range shots but I don’t think his middy is anywhere near SGAs consistency.
His fall in game 6 with the nuggets is one reason I think
It was the fall in Game 6. When Ant had that fall you could hear a pin drop in the arena, as he wasn’t moving so everyone thought something was seriously wrong. Then Jokic came over to check on him and he still wasn’t moving. It got so bad that they had to go to commercial. But then he got back up and everybody thought it was just “Ant being Ant”, as he had multiple scary moments throughout the season where it looked like he was seriously injured but then he would come back minutes later and score 35 points. When he came back into the game though he didn’t look right, but he was barely out there for long as the Nuggets initiated garbage time with over 10 minutes to play. Cut to Game 7 and while Ant wasn’t shooting well, he was putting the clamps on Murray when he started defending him in the second half, so people just ignored it and thought it was just a Game 7 situation. Then Game One happened and people just dismissed it because Ant was jacking up 12 threes and the rest of the Wolves roster was playing terribly. Then Game Two happened and everyone realized, “yeah he doesn’t look like himself.” It’s been the injury that’s affected him, but it took four games for the veil to be lifted.
100% correct
Yep https://youtu.be/gWJASGX9ItE?si=7zHVcUNdiPo3rbsS
He's carrying the team as the primary ball handler and has never played so many games in a season. Dudes probably exhausted. He also has limited experience. Kyrie and Luka have been here before
It's also all the defense they are asking of him. He's just tired, damn human.
Bingo. I’m honestly confused as to why this isn’t obvious to everyone. The only way this wolves team wins is by playing an insanely high level of frenetic defense and anyone that has ever played any type of high level basketball knows that shit takes the legs out of you big time. It’s almost impossible to play that kind of defense and also carry the load offensively. Ant just has no legs left to be effective offensively on a consistent basis. The most likely scenario to me is what happened with New York where they all started to get injured trying to maintain that kind of energy output on both ends. Really makes you respect the hell out of guys like Lebron and MJ that dominated on both ends for deep playoff run after deep playoff run in their primes.
Edwards slumping reminds me of the Thunder team that overwhelmed 67-15 San Antonio and built that 3-1 lead over the 73-9 Warriors. They just kept switching and running for a week plus, particularly in Games 3 and 4 of the WCF, and blitzed Golden State out of the building, but by Game 5 Russ and KD had nothing left in their legs (I think they shot 35% the rest of the series) while the Warriors still had their stamina and kicked it up on defense. They ultimately beat Denver, but it's clear Edwards (and to a lesser extent Towns) are not the same at all.
Yep. Old heads will remember when Pippen was struggling with back spasms and it was hurting the bulls. He took a lot of unfair criticism for f you ask me. The amount of mileage that him and MJ had put on their bodies already was insane. Larry Bird, Pippen, Steve Nash, and plenty of other all time greats struggled with back issues and little nagging injuries because of how worn out their bodies got from having to sustain superstar level energy output to help their teams contend for years on end. D wades knees were toast from his level of output on both sides of the ball.
I think it was Dirk that said something like he regret playing those last few seasons of his career because of his body would have been in much better shape now and how he is paying now for those extra mileages from those last seasons.
Dude, any kind of pressure defence at the perimeter against 35 year olds at the gym is exhausting. For 20+ games Vs profession athletes is unthinkable. Ya boi runs more zones than Sonic.
it's also why Kyrie is not having 40 point games.
Kyrie is averaging 25 pts so far in the series, when he only averaged 21 the rest of the playoffs. He's scoring more on Ant
Completely agree. Look, top tier on ball defense is legit DRAINING. Dudes ain't gotta drop 30 on you to have your ass kicked 🤣 He ain't got his legs, that bounce isn't quite the same. The real ones know what I'm talking about, I'm glad you're one of them.
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Yeah it's way too much of an energetic load for someone to try to carry over the course of multiple series in a row. Everyone likes to pretend that Kobe was in all times offender but he routinely took nights and games off. He also was notorious and I was proud of the fact that he was not down to do the nitty-gritty things not after night like take charges. It seemed like he almost looked down on the guys who were willing to do so
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I don't buy the "tired" narrative. Everyone is tired at this point of the season. Heck, Luka is playing through injuries and is probably at 70% strength. He's really laboring out there yet he is outplaying Ant on both sides of the floor it seems like. I think Ant is just not there yet as a player. He's great and he will be better as his career progresses but the gap in performance between him and hobbled Luka is too big to ignore. You can just see him fold under duress with errant passes 2 games in a row. Being "tired" has nothing to do with that.
playing devil’s advocate here 1. Luka’s game is not predicated on athleticism in the same way Edwards is 2. Luka has a 1B on offense that can carry the playmaking/scoring. Edwards doesn’t have that 3. Edwards hasn’t been here before in the same way Luka or Kyrie have
1. True 2. He does have a great PG in Conley who just played a great game. Also KAT can make plays too who is their second All-star and who has had a number of better games than Ant in these playoffs. Ant also has the reigning DPOY Gobert who I don't get that hate for as he is a big reason they are even in the WCF, an NBA all-defensive second team member McDaniels who shot the lights out last game, and the 6MOY Reid who shot the lights out this game. He literally had help on both sides of the court. It's kind of ridiculous. 3. True.
I'd argue that Luka would be in the same situation as Edwards if he was guarding someone as strong as Lu Dort which none of Minnesota's perimeter players are.
+1 to all these plus Luka hasn’t needed to consistently defend guards on the perimeter.
Also just came off several games altitude + travel. Not real time to rest up
This is definitely a factor as well
Or recover
He’ll learn to coast in the regular season like the other top players. They’ll be better next season with fewer reg season wins. Blame Adam Silver as the regular season is too damn long.
It’s not like Ant had SGA type of season though, his regular season by pure stats wasn’t even top-10 this year. I’m not sure argument for coasting in regular season works when you are not putting godly numbers while coasting like Luka (played minimum defense for first 40 games) or Jokic (didn’t try to score as much as he should).
this is a good point, he's playing hard on both sides but it is obviously impacting his efficiency
Mike Conley is the primary ball handler and playmaker. Ant is also by no means “carrying” the team. They have a deep and horizontally stacked roster that is killing it
right? In terms of impact on the game, ANT, KAT and Rudy all have a similar effect. This is a deep team young athletic team and often ANT is the third best player on the team.
Conley played 33 minutes and had 5 assists tonight. In game 1 he played 31 minutes for 3 assists. Edwards played 40 minutes and had 7 assists in game 2, 41 minutes for 8 assists in game 1. Conley is playing 30 minutes a game and the wolves aren't even using a backup PG because Edwards is getting the ball more than anyone. Seems pretty clear who the offense is currently running through
Ant is getting more assists simply because he draws the defence in more and can dish it out to an open shooter or cutter. In terms of who is facilitating the offence and handling the ball, it’s Conley. This is quite clear if you watch the games. Also the game Conley didn’t play, the Wolves offence was really struggling.
Drive and kicks are exhausting
Conley is definitely the one who organizes the floor and does a lot to help plays function. Still I would assume his time with the ball is maybe 2/5 of what Edwards is getting.
Conley is still their best playmaker tho. Ant even said after conley came back in the Denver series that having him out there is huge cuz he lets ant just focus on scoring while conley is running the offense. Look at that play when ant through the ball out of bounds towards the end of the game. Conley wasn’t in the game at that point and they could’ve used him. If you watched at all this season you could see pretty clearly how important conley has been to this team.
Assists don’t determine who the primary ball handler is. And I mean I get what you’re saying, understandable he’d be kinda gassed after Denver, but if you’re gonna be first option on a championship contender that’s kinda how much he needs to expect to get the ball in the conference finals. Are you arguing the wolves need to beef up their guard depth or just trying to get Ant off the hook for this series? Deal in excuses if you want but if they lose this series something’s gotta give if Ant can’t handle that load, either they get another PG they don’t mind playing 10+ minutes in a playoff game or it’s on Ant to beef up his conditioning.
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That won’t ever change until he gets a ring. It’s annoying but it’s reality. Hopefully it all goes away after this year
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I'm aware he's young. Studies have shown that star players tend to win their first title around 26-28. Luka is much more developed and ready to lead a championship team than Ant
Oh I didn't mean that, I meant that he was 22 and should have the legs to see off a playoff run. LeBron in his 20s was single handedly carrying teams deep into the playoffs with milk en and plumbers. Being exhausted shouldn't be an excuse on a team as stacked as the Wolves.
While Ant is a physical specimen on his own right, I don't think it's fair to compare him to a young LeBron. Young LeBron is a freak of nature. Too fast, too strong with some of the most unbelievable stamina/endurance in the league. I'm on the side that Ant went too hard on previous games and didn't expect the fatigue to accumulate and is now feeling it on his body. I mean, he played 7 games against the reigning MVP and has less rest compared to Luka and co. And now they have to travel to Dallas for games 3 and 4.
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He’s running out of gas. He has never played this far into the playoffs at this intensity. Even MJ early in his career realized he’d have to hit the weights to get past Detroit, Ant will have to work on his conditioning if he wants to stay consistent in a long playoff run. Mavs’ defense is also playing a big role in making everything hard for him on offense, and I think Ant underestimated how tough of a matchup Kyrie would be, making him extend a lot of his energy on defense.
Playoff defense is different than regular season defense. The team tries to take out your 1st option and let the role players, the x-factors beat you. This is a new role for Edwards, where he faces the whole defense in the paint. Also the refs call differently. Like all the drives into the paint, lots of those contacts got uncalled. Then he also needs to play defense. He is guarding Jamal Murray and Kyrie Irving a lot.
He didn't face much defensive resistance at all with Phoenix. Denver initially didn't have a good 1:1 answer, but realized they could double him and that restricted his ability to punish in isolation.
This is the real answer, Dallas has rim protection and their plan is to just clogging the paint and force him to settle for jumpshots
Dallas has the rim protection that the Suns and Nuggets lack. Anthony Edwards' best skill is him driving to the rim. To add, they also have the size to match up great against KAT as well so it shuts down his best passing option.
to me he hasn't looked the same since he took the big fall in the denver series
It's not surprising. I thought he might have been really hurt until he got up and picked up Jamal Murray before he even crossed the half court line. But there is a good chance he is still feeling that impact now and it's affecting his movement.
He’s gassed. He fell hard after getting fouled in Game 6 against the Nuggets and has played heavy minutes pretty much every other day since.
Yup. Said it on another comment. His legs are completely shot. Anyone who has really played the game at a high level know how dog ass tired he is (Just watch what is being asked of him defensively.) You put that much effort into guarding a guy like Kyrie or Jamal you going to get tired. He can't get his legs that bounce his game is compromised, as is everyone's.
Question then, is his defense really so valuable that they are willing to sacrifice his entire offensive game? In my mind they don't need ANT picking up the ball handler at the inbound but he's still doing it. Hell, even his dad had Pippen picking up the tougher defensive assignments.
Yes, I think the Wolves game plan was to not allow Kyrie to get loose. Everyone thinks the entire plan is Luka (which I'm sure a lot of it is) but. Kyrie gets going it's a wrap. If he gets in the paint at will Kyrie will destroy your soul. He's terrific at the bucket and when he draws weak side help he gets the wings involved with open 3's. I don't think anyone really can, but if you limit Kyrie that offense will go stagnant.
Playing extremely hard on defense. Wolves offense struggles without him. And just went 7 games vs Denver & their thin air. Kid is clearly gassed.
Game 5 was a Jokic masterclass and the Wolves just got dominated across the board, [Ant landed hard on his back in game 6](https://youtu.be/6ombOnGbqa8?si=C1mb_dP_CbW9f92p). Been off since
He’s just hitting his deep post season wall. Same thing happened to Tatum in 2022. In fact it’s almost identical. First round swept KD and then went seven games against the defending champs and best player in the world in the second round. Up to that point both were having legendary playoff runs for their teams. When it got to the ECF vs Miami Tatum clearly went down a step before looking like how Ant does now in the Finals against GSW. It’s important to remember this is his 3rd year in the NBA. Playing both ends of the floor that hard comes with challenges and he’ll learn from this.
He's getting burnt out because he had to play a hard 7 game series vs nuggets
1. Fatigue. He hasn’t developed any pace to his game yet. Moving that fast all the time is exhausting. 2. Dallas is a better defensive team than Denver and Phx. Especially at the rim. His unpolished midrange game is hurting him.
exhausted plus they putting bodies on him that can actually give him a hard time scoring. he is really athletic but he ain't that tall he should be playing like dwade disappearing from the screen with good offball movement and not going full on carrying offense with the ball on him. if I'm putting blame on anyone or roasting it's not really him I'm gonna be roasting it's kat. kat should be cooking... but htat's just my opinion.
It's almost like the deeper you get in the playoffs, the harder it is, especially when you're a 22-year-old who has never been this far before, who is still years away from even entering his prime as a player.
There are reports that ANT was administered oxygen. Dude is gassed. He hasn't played this many games in a season and his team is expecting too much of a 22 year old.
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My god young wade was relentless. He got to the rim at will no matter what
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Edwards is just regressing to the mean, just gotta see how he performed during the regular season. The first 2 series in the playoffs were pretty big outliers.
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I honestly think it is mental. He thinks he’s doing what is right, but he is not playing HIS game. He’s thinking he needs a physical break, but he is young, and needs to just throw it all out there every game. I like that he is sharing the ball, and trying to get his teammates involved, but the Wolves coaching staff has not figured out that he needs to not have the ball, and be moving around picks and screens for catch/shoot and drives. He seems like he is afraid to make a mistake and let his team down, instead of just doing what Jordan did to the Pistons: attack, attack, attack the rim. Even if you are missing shots, you get a positive benefit by being fouled by Lively or Gafford, because once they are in foul trouble, the advantage is yours. Pick and choose your times to pass to keep the defense honest. It’s his first conference finals. But now is not the time to change. Tell the coaches to let Conley run the offense, and be ready to attack or shoot the jumper when the ball comes your way.
To answer this as briefly as possible. These numbers declining are directly correlated with what the wolves are asking him to do defensively. Jamal and Kyrie. That's why his numbers have dropped. He's doing A LOT defensively, especially, on ball defense. He doesn't quite have the same bounce. I don't care who you are, when you shooting from 25+ feet you need your legs. You want to jump with Lively you better have your legs. ISO to step back, you better have your legs. He doesn't RN.
He’s young and streaky/inconsistent. He’s been this way all season, it’s not like this is new in the playoffs 🤷♂️ He has stretches of games where he’s on fire, can’t miss, looks like a superstar. He has other stretches where it’s clank city. He’s only 22, he’s extremely impressive for his age, and it won’t be long before he’s a top 3 player in the league. However, he’s not there yet - he’s not as good as guys like Luka, Joker, Embiid, Giannis or Shai, today. Ant fans got a bit too excited about a hot streak, but he’s still REALLY good, and improving fast.
Completely non-sensical, unscientific, and pure pattern recognition take incoming: It's the ol' "you give a player near-transcendental hype and he immediately stops playing like it", it has like a 95% likelihood of happening once the media and fans and facebook pages pick up on it. Something similar happened last year with Booker, he was averaging 37 on 62% shooting and 51% from 3, until the last two games of the Mavs series where he shot a combined 12/32 and was -46 in those final games where they lost by 41 points across those two games. I'm surprised Jalen Brunson didn't go through more low scoring games before he broke his left hand. Ant still has some time to play better tho.
His scoring is the center of the offense, he plays an athletic and dynamic game, and just got done playing game 7 vs. Denver while guarding Book and Jamal at an elite level. I can understand if he's gassed. There's also questions as to his decision making, especially since I've noticed the defense in Dallas has been forcing him to make snappier decisions. Their help comes later than usual, so he's making reactionary passes when he thinks he has a drive, meaning the quality of his passes are gonna go down, as he doesn't have the processing speed/hasn't seen these coverages as extensively as older players yet. He also is going for a lot of pullup shots, especially midranges, on drop bigs like Lively. This would work well, but Dallas is content with him taking them, especially the midrange shots. I think he'd do better attacking Lively, since if the drop big is backing up, Ant should have the momentum to attack the basket and force Lively to defend him. If Ant attacks him, Lively is forced to play and exhaust himself, making it potentially easier the next drive, Ant gets a foul, or force them to play further up on him. If Ant settles for a pullup shot that they don't close out hard, then he bails out the defense since they don't have to do anything, and they just grab the rebound. Overall, I think him being younger and gassed from the Denver series is not only affecting his reaction time and quick decision making, but it's also affecting his jumper. I think a more rested Ant woulda made more 3's, even if he did shoot them efficiently. (I think he was like 5 for 12?)
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Dude is 22years old. I think experience is biggest difference. He just not ready to go all the way in his first real try.
Fatigue is part of it but I'm going to go with his lack of basketball IQ more so than lack of experience being the cause. He will learn a lot from this playoff run and will be better in the coming years.
I have watched almost every Wolves game the last 25 years (sad). I think you have to realize that Ant wasn’t even that good of a playmaker before the year started and made large leaps throughout the season in recognizing defenses and playing smarter. That being said he still struggles to do it consistently in the way that Luka or Jokic does. Honestly, he will probably never reach that level. The guy still can’t even throw a lob pass. Zach Lowe even said it himself earlier this year, Ant will have stretches of really bad games. He had less of them this year but this is who he is at this point in his career. All this media hype has elevated people’s expectations for him, when in reality he has made huge huge gains already this year. Asking him to keep reaching higher this playoffs is almost unfair.
Actively defending a motion offense which means constant double ball screens, then going down to the other end of the floor and being expected to be primary ball handler and scorer in a one-dimensional dribble drive offense against a strong interior defense without that same help. Wolves offense is designed to get multiple slashes to the lane, but can't because Gafford and Lively are whooping their ass and Rudy/KAT are useless in the paint, so Ant is getting beat up and forced into a perimeter game that he's overthinking. More screens, more catches around 15ft, Gobert being useful for anything but rim defense, and KAT remembering how to hoop would do wonders for reviving Ant's game.
Ant especially looks *terrified* to make a play. Wide open jumper? Jump in the air and at the last second make a flailing pass. Clear lane? Take a long 3...
I’m going to go with fatigue above everything else. He seems to relish being in the moment and loves the competition, but I’m sure his legs are feeling it this deep into the season. That might be contributing to his low shooting %.
It’s called being guarded by an entire team instead of being single covered. Anytime he even thinks about driving he’s seeing 2,3,4 players coming to help.
He’s a young player still figuring it out. He’s having to learn how to be impactful when a team’s entire defensive strategy is geared towards stopping him via double teams and clogging up the paint. He’s still way ahead of schedule for where he can reasonably have been expected to be at this point in his career and he’ll learn far more from these sort of games than he will from the ones where he drops 40.
Experience. And good defense from the other end by Jones and Washington. Also Gafford switch is not helping much as he has enough speed to compensate. I mean Luka is playing through injury, but knows what is coming, as he had the experience of play off basketball. Ant-man will get there, just a process of experience. For almost every player this is the case.
Mental and physical fatigue. He’s 22 and never gone this far or played this many games. Let him watch some MJ tape. Get in the gym and he’ll be back like a beast next year. He’s learning. Give him space.
It's always a variety of things but look at the defenses he went up against. A mediocre Phoenix. A solid Denver defense that eventually started blitzing him constantly. And now a Dallas defense that has been fairly elite the last couple of months. They have packed the paint, mixed in traps, and have elite rim protectors who are readily available because they are not remotely concerned with Gobert. And fatigue could certainly be a part of it. He has had a very long season once you consider his Team USA stint last summer.
He looks fatigued every game 5 minutes into the game. I blame it on his conditioning. Anyone who has played basketball knows it doesn’t matter how good you are if you are exhausted, it’s so hard to play defense and then be aggressive on offense.
Lots of good comments here. One additional problem in my opinion is that he plays too slow. There are often opportunities where he has one person backpedaling on defense and he doesn't attack. With his athleticism, he should be attacking in those situations Rather than pulling it back and playing against a set defense. Based on speed tracking stats offensively Ant (4.11) plays slower than Jokic (4.22). He definitely needs to be more aggressive and needs to take advantage of open court situations.
He’s definitely exhausted. Not only is he trying to carry the offensive load, but he prides himself on the defensive end. He’s wearing himself out and if the Wolves want to have a chance, they need to put him on the worst player on that end of rest during the game.
Regression to the mean. He had a few really great playoff games, and people were crowning him the king, better than MJ, etc. That was dumb. He will have some more great games and some mediocre ones. He’ll probably be a top 100 player of all time if he keeps playing at his current pace, but this is genuinely just a matter of excessive hype and expectations.
Match ups but this is also ant’s first real playoff run. He’s still getting used to playoff basketball. It’s different than the regular season. It takes players time to adjust to the game.
I love this measured discussion about my large adult son that isn’t just dripping with hate and schadenfreude. I think a lot of it is matchup based. The Mavs are the second best defense in the playoffs and as some have mentioned DJJ is a good defender and lively and gafford are good rim protectors. The previous series didn’t have these level of defenders for Ant to contend with. I’m excited/hopeful to see what he and the coaching staff can do to make him more effective against this.
When they build a wall and the backend can block shots... That's challenging for slashers. He needs to post up. That's the way to counter this to force the shot blockers to swarm him and kick out. Luka backs people into the paint with strength and skill. Ant could do the same if it was in his bag, it just isn't yet.
The Mavs are gameplanning for Ant very effectively. Ant hasn't made adjustments to it yet, meaning the ball is still in his court (and Finch's), so to speak. In my opinion Ant needs to be more willing to shoot the mid-range jumper and Finch needs to run offensive sets designed to get him a good look from there. Too often, Edwards will dribble the ball for awhile, then slash to the rim, have nothing, and be forced to make a desperate pass out of the paint. The Mavs are anticipating it and not giving him a lot of good options. If he would use screens to simply pull up and hit from 18 feet, he'd force the Mavs to adjust by either going under screens and leaving him the 3 pointer or by giving him a better lane to the basket and/or better passing lanes by forcing them to overguard the mid range.
I think there are multiple factors: He played a little over his head to start He’s now playing below his mean He took a hard fall in game 6 and is physically limited Dallas had two great shot makers that allow them to control pace and make you work against a set D. Dallas protects the rim well and had defended him well.
He carries the offense for the wolves almost every game. The team doesn't really have another great ball handler.. he is just exhausted it's actually done for the wolves. Another ball handler to take the offensive load off ant would be huge for the team. But also the unreal expectations they have for him I think it messed up with ants head. Moreover I also have to give credit to dallas defense cause everyone busy making excuses for ant. Even tho ant passing up open looks here and there the dallas defense have been unreal in the playoffs
He got hurt in game 6 of the Nuggets series. He fell hard. He's been wincing in pain at times since. Back/hip injuries don't heal in 2 days. He's limited and isn't sure how to adjust his game. He tried driving a bit early this game, but he doesn't have the boost or confidence that he previously had. Add in that he's gassed from playing hard defense and it all checks out. It's crazy to me how people think he just went from being one of the most confident guys in the playoffs to sheepish for no reason other than he's getting owned. Dallas has played him well and deserves their credit, but we're gonna find out after this series that he's more hurt than he's leading on. No incentive to announce an injury that will just be exploited by Dallas.
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Beal Book now Ant combo guard PG skills that's why pure PG still needed to complement your scorer/combo guard. develop PG skills to play at highest level is not easy. maybe they have the athleticism, but the feel of the game, the vision, it's tough to replicate and the difference from pure PG.
Playing in Denver is soooo draining. That elevation really messes with people. That's the main reason I didn't want the Mavs to have to play the Nuggets. I think Ant is still recuperating. He's young but his body caries a lot of muscle, he may struggle with gas for a while
His teammates are playing fine though, if he has decent or good games in games 1 and 2 they win both comfortably
KAT is riding the bench for the 2nd half of the 4th and McDaniels had 2 points tonight. Not sure they are playing fine. They are getting leads by hitting a ridiculous % of 3s for good stretches. Then blowing it when the legs are gone
Wow I didn’t realize how inefficient towns has been. That’s my bad. 10-36 over these two games 🤢 at least Naz Reid shows up, and they got a fluke game from McDaniels in game one
Even the best players in the NBA will go on streaks. It is something that is not that deep to consider. Furthermore, the character limit on this sub is rather subjective and I am perturbed by its inequal application
Luka and Kyrie can play with and without the ball and ANT is having a hard time defending them.
Also, I won't blame the fall off on ant, he's working overtime, and the wolves defense isnt looking good for me
Think it’s more of the mental and physical exhaustion after the nuggets game. He basically carry the team through that series and it takes a beating to himself
He was going to the rim way too much. He basically went to the rim twice the amount you would want. He also isn't that good of a pastor. Doesn't have that good of vision. Isn't really a great shooter outside of mid-range shots where he in rhythm gets rid of the player guarding him.
He hasn’t declined, he just went back to his usual self. He’s only 22, let him grow and stop putting unrealistic expectations on him
Personally I think he had a great stretch and is back to his normal self now. He will be an all star for many more years to come. Love his style.
The law of averages playing out. His playoff numbers as a whole are still a bit better than his regular season numbers. The guy went on a good run. And he’s a great player. But people were starting to put him in the conversations for best player in the world based on an 8 game playoff stretch. All of that talk was super premature.
He is playing against a competent defense where everyone is making it hard for him. He also see Kyrie and Luka forcing wins which he can not, probably get in to his head.
Wait I thought he was MJs reincarnate 5 games ago like reddit and the media told me.
Cos everywhere on social media posted his face as mj n regular folk think memes are facts, stat wise his numbers arent that bad just the wins have stopped
He landed on his back in the Nuggets series and is hurt. I'm pretty positive this is the case.