Edwards finally described why he conceded so early.
The Timberwolves are out, and somehow the loudest part of the loss is not the Spurs blowing Minnesota off the floor but a handshake.
With eight minutes left in Game 6, with the Wolves getting smoked, Anthony Edwards got up off the bench, walked across the floor, and dapped up the Spurs while the game was still going.
The clip went everywhere within an hour, and while some called it classy, Dirk Nowitzki and Udonis Haslem on the NBA on Prime postgame show were not having it.
A week later, Edwards finally got on his YouTube channel and tried to explain.
The Moment Everyone Is Talking About
San Antonio had it 139-109 by the buzzer, and honestly the game was over way before Edwards started shaking hands, because the Spurs went 62-20 this year and beat Minnesota by close to a hundred points across six games.
Edwards averaged 21.6 points in the playoffs and looked spent by Game 6, going 9 of 26 from the floor against a defense that made his usual stuff disappear.
He averaged a career-best 28.8 points in the regular season at 24 years old, but the knee never really got right after Denver and Victor Wembanyama eventually broke him in this series with size and reach he had no answer for.
Why Edwards Says He Did It
In his own side of the story, this wasn't about being friendly at all, it was about getting out before he got mad.
"Yeah, it's 8 minutes but we not going back in the game," Edwards said. "When you win a playoff series everybody is celebrating at the end of the game. They'll be smiling while I'm pissed off. I was like, 'let me go ahead and congratulate these boys because I'm not going to be laughing with y'all after you whooped my ass.' I didn't want to go dap them up at all. But then what would they have said about me?"
The giveaway is that last line, where he admits he didn't want to do it and then did it anyway because he knew the alternative would look worse to people watching at home.
We should understand that this is a 24-year-old thinking about the optics in real time, which is both impressive and a little sad, and earlier in the series he was open about how dominant Wembanyama looked too, so the respect was real.
Where the Growth Has to Come Next
Minnesota finished 49-33 and exited in the second round for the second time in three years, and the frustration around this group is stacking up fast.
Donte DiVincenzo missed the whole Spurs series after blowing his Achilles in the Denver round, which left Minnesota with no real answer for Wembanyama, who is averaging 11.9 rebounds and 4.0 blocks for his playoff career.
Edwards is now the guy leading a roster that is reportedly getting overhauled this summer, and that is the harder part, because eight minutes left and down thirty was the moment to compete or fume like everyone else, and he chose to be different in a way nobody really knows how to read yet.
