The second half of the U.S. men’s national basketball team’s final group-stage game against Puerto Rico on Saturday might as well have been a greatest hits compilation for Anthony Edwards: extra-mustard finger rolls, half-speed stepback 3s, hanging tomahawk dunks that keep the Ant-MJ comparison factories in business, and a picturesque breakaway windmill dunk that probably made fellow Olympian Chase Budinger proud. Team USA’s 104-83 victory officially gave it the top seed for the rest of the tournament; the four quarterfinal games will be played on Tuesday, with the U.S. facing Brazil as the nightcap.
Edwards’s 26 points against Puerto Rico were the highest total of any U.S. player in the group stage, an I got next show of assurance for Team USA’s ensuing years in an era of basketball fandom that invariably fixates on the past and future over the present. But Ant has a special way of capturing moments—and emanating joy—as they come. “It was incredible to watch him go to work,” Kevin Durant said after the game. “Knock down shots, get to the rim that easily. Just play his game and have fun. ... It ignited the whole crowd. He ignited our team.”
That joy was most evident with 8:36 remaining in the second quarter against Puerto Rico. Edwards had just corralled a loose offensive rebound off a Durant miss before shoveling the ball right back to KD on a step-up 3 at the top of the arc to rectify the possession. As the ball flowed through the net, Edwards, with a beaming, cocksure smile, embraced Durant. Never mind being the brightest young star on Team USA, and never mind the shit talk he spat in Durant’s vicinity during the NBA playoffs. For a second, Ant was Durant’s ball boy. And he couldn’t have been happier. This has been the revelation of basketball’s long summer: Edwards and Durant’s intergenerational kinship, one of the most compelling cases for meeting your heroes since Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep on the set of The Devil Wears Prada.
“Guys, Ant Edwards is trailing Kevin Durant around like [Durant is his] big brother,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said last week on the Hoop Collective podcast. “Literally, Ant gets off the bus with Durant. When they warm up before practice, Ant is standing next to Durant. ... Ant cannot get enough of him.”
Edwards, who turns 23 on Monday, was 6 years old when Kevin Durant made his NBA debut on Halloween night 2007. Not long after, Edwards attended his first live NBA game: a matchup between the Hawks and Thunder in Atlanta. Taking in the grace of an ascendant KD, the young Edwards walked out of the arena with a new idol. Catching a glimpse of the greatest offensive talent in basketball history can do that to a kid. (Hell, far lesser talents have inspired adolescent awe: There was nothing I treasured more circa 2001 than my Team USA jersey of Allan Houston—no. 6!—from the 2000 Sydney Olympics that I found languishing on a clearance rack at T.J. Maxx.) It doesn’t really matter how we find our way to the things we love. Our gateways are our gateways. But sometimes strange symmetries are at work.
Fast-forward to 2024—in Lille, France, where both Edwards and Durant are coming off the bench for the U.S. men’s national basketball team at the Paris Olympics—and that sense of reverence in Edwards persists. “This has been a great experience for him,” Team USA head coach Steve Kerr said of Edwards during this Olympic endeavor. “He loves Kevin. Kevin is his idol. He is learning from him.” Which is interesting, isn’t it? They are worlds apart in style and temperament, yet they seem to have encircled each other as spiritual conduits.
Although KD’s game has always been smooth and lithe, he grew up worshiping the visceral power of Vince Carter. And while Edwards’s paradigm-shifting athleticism and juiced-up charisma make him feel like a spiritual successor to Carter or Jordan, Ant’s GOAT, if you were to ask him, is Durant: a nomadic basketball hermit who sees the game as a voyage back and forth across a suspension bridge between existentialism and joy. (In this tortured metaphor, I suppose KD’s Twitter account would be a bottomless bag of granola bars.) It’s funny how opposites attract.
Together, Edwards and Durant form a reserve tandem that would rival any in the history of international competition—it helps that Durant happens to be the most accomplished scorer in USA Basketball’s existence and that Edwards is as daring and explosive as sin. They have each led the U.S. in scoring once in the team’s three group-stage games. On Sunday, Kerr told reporters that KD would remain a reserve player throughout the knockout round, which will keep Team USA’s superb bench unit intact. “I love that he’s coming off the bench,” Edwards said after playing South Sudan. “I get to play with him, so I hope Coach keeps bringing him off the bench. I get to pass it to him. He gets to pass it back. That’s probably one of my biggest dreams ever, so that’s dope.”
That has always been the most compelling aspect of the Team USA experience, anyway: watching some of the greatest players across multiple eras expand their imaginations and explore new ways of being. It’s no mystery why Durant has seemed so at ease as a longtime member of the team. He’s a searcher, a basketball monk seeking the purest expression of hoops. He found that for a while in Golden State, but then the noise got too loud. Team USA, meanwhile, has always been something of a safe haven, a place where he could be celebrated and championed for a single-minded pursuit that has seemed more spiritual than status-driven. In Edwards, KD perhaps sees a flesh-and-blood manifestation of the practice that’s most difficult to arrive at among the four immeasurables: empathetic joy. Playing alongside Durant, Edwards realizes his childhood dreams in real time. Playing alongside Edwards, Durant has a hand in basketball’s future.
Still, there is a certain malaise to this Team USA squad—maybe a miscalculation of expectations. This might be the most talented roster of men’s basketball players ever assembled, but our Avengers-pilled minds are having a hard time recognizing the significance without a perceived crisis for the team to latch onto or obliterate. The revolutionary awe and novelty of the Dream Team era are now decades in the rearview. The Redeem Team era was a cultural reset to address the shock of losing in 2004, but the U.S. swim team—particularly the men’s side—is probably feeling that particular squeeze these days more than the men’s basketball squad. Any looming threat to the U.S.’s basketball dominance is simply part of the nature of the game’s rising tides. “It’s the knockout rounds. All the teams in it are really good teams,” Edwards said after the win against Puerto Rico. “They’ve got NBA players and compete at a high level. It’s supposed to be hard.”
And even if it isn’t—even if the rest of the world isn’t there quite yet—this Olympic run carries more significance than just the weight of gold. There is a sense of heralding in the way that Kerr and Durant talk of Edwards, in the way that Edwards can command the ball even among the brightest of stars. It feels like he’s already entrusted with the torch for 2028, when Team USA will play on home soil. There is a real, transformative power in witnessing the next generation’s affirmation by its predecessors. If only it happened more often. These knockout rounds in the Olympics will present basketball’s changing of the guard in real time. If we’re lucky, it’ll look a lot like it has over the past week: with Edwards and Durant, side by side, subsumed by the joy of the game.
