NBA Playoffs Have Proved Anthony Edwards is Top 7 in the NBA
The NBA Playoffs are where player debates are often won and lost. Legacies are made on that stage, but the league's current hierarchy is largely determined there, too.
And whether he realizes that or not, Anthony Edwards perennially raises his level of play to meet the postseason's biggest moments.
In the first round of these 2025 playoffs, he dropped 43 points in Game of a five-game series win over the Los Angeles Lakers. And after a couple feel-out performances in the second round against the Golden State Warriors, he went for 36 on Saturday.
His scoring helped the Minnesota Timberwolves secure a 102-97 win and a 2-1 lead in the conference semifinals. And beyond that, it was another bullet point on Edwards' "top seven in the league" resume.
In today's NBA, forcing your way into that conversation isn't easy.
Just look at the regular-season production of Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander over the last few years. Consider the consistency of Jayson Tatum. Remember what a healthy Luka Dončić did just last season. Think about how much Stephen Curry bends a defense by simply running around the floor. This particular postseason is doing a lot for the cases of Tyrese Haliburton, Donovan Mitchell and Jalen Brunson, too.
The depth of talent in the NBA right now is off the charts. We're already over seven names for players with real top-seven arguments, and we haven't even mentioned LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid and Kawhi Leonard. Victor Wembanyama might need to be in there next season, for crying out loud. If he could ever have a fully healthy season, Zion Williamson probably could be, too.
The list is absurd. And yet, Edwards might be one of the names you simply can't cut from it.
After his 36-point outing on Saturday, he's up to 26.6 points, 8.6 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 1.5 steals this postseason, but the raw production doesn't really do his impact justice.
Despite cranking up his three-point volume to near-Curry levels this regular season, Ant can still shapeshift into a freight train at a moment's notice and finish at the rim like prime Michael Jordan.
That combination, of course, is ridiculous. And this isn't to say that Edwards is all of the shooter and floor spacer that Curry is or all of the slasher that MJ was. But in the playoffs, at least in certain games, he's proven capable of being 85-90 percent of each. At the same time. And that's pretty terrifying, especially for a 23-year-old.
How are you supposed to defend that? If you aggressively try to take away the threes, he's going to blow by you. Give any cushion for a drive, and he can punish you from the three-point line.
He's rapidly developed into one of the league's most prolific pick-your-poison scorers. And again, he's almost always able to ratchet that up in the playoffs.
His career regular-season average is 23.9 points. In the postseason, it's 27.5.
Those aren't the only categories where he's better, either. His averages for rebounds, assists and steals are all higher in the playoffs.
All of that contributes to a career playoff box plus/minus ("...a basketball box score-based metric that estimates a basketball player’s contribution to the team when that player is on the court") of 7.0 that puts him in pretty special company among active players.
- Nikola Jokić (10.6)
- LeBron James (10.0)
- Luka Dončić (8.4)
- Giannis Antetokounmpo (8.4)
- Kawhi Leonard (8.1)
- Stephen Curry (7.0)
- Anthony Edwards (7.0)
Three of the above (LeBron, Kawhi and Curry) are all well past their primes. Edwards hasn't even hit his.
And while his game may never lead to the kind of gaudy stat lines we often see from Jokić, Dončić and Giannis, he does check some boxes they don't.
Ant is a better defender and more prolific isolation scorer (from the perimeter) than Jokić. His defense and athleticism set him apart from Luka, too. His outside shooting sets him apart from Giannis.
He may not be quite on the league's top tier with those three and SGA, but he could reasonably be considered the leader of the next one.
And, not to look too far down the road, if Edwards meets up with Gilgeous-Alexander in the conference finals and pulls off that upset, we might enter the 2025-26 season wondering if "top seven" is a little conservative for Ant.
