LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant may have been the on-court heroes for Team USA at the 2024 Olympics. Still, you could argue that nobody had a better basketball summer than Anthony Edwards. The 23-year-old budding superstar took his brand worldwide as the youngest member of the Team USA squad that drew comparisons to the Dream Team while in Paris.
Edwards was the fourth leading scorer on a stacked USA roster and only trailed the three greatest players of the last generation. He made some friends and challenged the USA table tennis team. He was seemingly everywhere in Paris, showing off the personality and charm that Wolves fans have been raving about for the last four years.
However, with a great basketball aura comes great responsibility, and it is important never to say anything that Isiah Thomas could perceive as a slight. That’s precisely what Edwards did when he told a Wall Street Journal reporter after winning a gold medal: “I don’t think anybody had skill back then. Michael Jordan was the only one that really had skill.”
Everyone knows that when you mention Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas isn’t far away to well, actually any praise given to the greatest basketball player of all time. Zeke retweeted Ant’s quote, saying, “Propaganda works, so be careful what you choose to believe.” Then he went on a weeks-long crusade to prove players weren’t just MJ’s puppets and that Jordan wasn’t s— without his supporting cast, among other things.
Unfortunately for Ant, it wasn’t just the NBA’s annoying uncle Zeke who wanted to get his shots in at a Gen Z star who had just won a gold medal. Magic Johnson pulled the old “I don’t never respond to a guy that’s never won a championship” playbook in response to Edwards’ shade towards the previous generation.
Two guys whose teams were directly responsible for beating the crap out of Michael Jordan and everyone else in the late 80s and forcing the GOAT to work his ass off to break through and win a championship in 1991 finally are expected to be a little perturbed by a guy who could be their grandson saying that they were a skidmark on Michael Jordan’s legacy. But when the criticism starts coming from inside the house, it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate things.
Kevin Garnett jumped into the generation argument with possibly the strongest words in response to Edwards. The Minnesota Timberwolves legend and self-avowed Anthony Edwards fan went on a long rant with Paul Pierce, which boiled down to him calling Ant out and saying that nobody in this generation could have played 20 years ago. It’s not fun for Wolves fans to see their idol and greatest player in franchise history have such harsh criticism for their beloved rising superstar, who led the team to its first conference finals appearance in 20 years.
It’s a tale as old as time, this generational bickering in the NBA. The old guys think all of the young guys are soft, while the young guys think all the old guys can’t dribble with their heads up. Current Lakers head coach JJ Redick once famously quipped that great players from the NBA’s early years, like Bob Cousy, put up the numbers they did because plumbers and firemen guarded them. Everyone wants to think they are part of the golden generation of their sport.
To give Anthony Edwards a little more grace than he was afforded by some of the game’s legends and a lot of guys who played middle school basketball in the 2010s, he was born in 2001. He prefaced his answer by saying that he didn’t watch it back in the day, so he can’t speak on it (and then proceeded to speak on it).
Edwards isn’t rewatching full Bulls/Knicks games from 1996. He’s just watching Michael Jordan highlights like the rest of us, and what he sees is MJ busting some dude’s ass every play for an hour-long highlight tape. Edwards grew up watching LeBron James and second-wind Kobe Bryant. He wasn’t even 10 years old when the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted Kyrie Irving and was still in high school when Steph Curry and Kevin Durant were running things in the bay.
Edwards should have just ended his answer after saying he didn’t watch, so he can’t speak on it. If he only knows Craig Ehlo and Bryon Russell from the shots Jordan hit in their faces or John Starks as the poor New York Knicks player that the Chicago Bulls took turns dunking on, who is he to say who had skill and who didn’t back then?
This generation of basketball players and fans grew up on social media, watching highlights like the older generation’s knowledge of out-of-town stars came down to their box score in the newspaper. Guys like Brian Scalabrine have debunked old narratives by beating the hell out of cocky intramural wannabes at the local state school.
The gatekeeping by the older generation of stars is becoming a growing issue in the sport we all try to love. For years, anyone who played in the ’80s or ’90s has been the only one allowed to decide who is tough and who isn’t because they used to be able to hand check. Garnett is probably correct in his assessment, as this generation of players has only ever experienced the freedom of movement and spacing that the three-point boom has afforded them.
But he picks out Edwards, who is probably one of the current players best equipped to play in the physical, grinding late 90s and early 2000s. As a Wolves fan, you’d love to see Garnett try to educate Edwards about players he might not be familiar with instead of immediately breaking things down into a generational standoff. Let him know that Terrell Brandon was a problem. Remind him that Stephon Marbury was Starbury for a reason. And let the kid know it was Wally’s World at one point.
Isaiah Thomas and Magic Johnson completely dismissed one of the brightest stars in the game they worked and bled to grow, which is embarrassing for both all-time greats. Thomas’ main agenda has been to cut down Michael Jordan at all costs for years. Therefore, we can toss out most of his criticism and dismiss it as a 40-year-old beef. Magic Johnson is supposed to be one of the great ambassadors for the sport, so seeing him pull the ladder up behind him and turn his nose up at anyone without a championship is childish and does nothing to move the game forward.
Anthony Edwards should choose his words more carefully and learn when not to speak about things that he doesn’t have the requisite knowledge of. However, it should be up to the older generation to educate the young stars instead of furthering the schism in the basketball community.