Anthony Edwards’s highlight reel is a ruthless collection of dunks, blocks, and unparalleled feats of athleticism. His most indelible plays are lightning bolts in slow motion. They ping into group chats among friends who don’t even care about basketball—you have to see this—inspiring awe and evoking sympathy for the victims who are eternalized in several million memory banks.
As a three-time All-Star, Edwards is most known for this—moments that legitimize his popularity and complement the rare, preternatural charisma that allows him to do a better job selling the game of basketball than anyone else on the planet.
But entertainment is a currency that can get a player only so far. Nobody understands this more than Edwards, who, despite finding his Minnesota Timberwolves on the precipice of a second straight early exit from the conference finals, has spent the bulk of his young career sparkling under the brightest lights. His scoring average in the playoffs is the third highest in NBA history among all players who’ve appeared in at least 30 games before their 24th birthday.
In his first couple of seasons, Edwards was unrefined and predictable, more defined by his unholy share of speed and power than technical precision or resourcefulness. But over the past two years, he’s infused his game with more than enough substance, dexterity, and guile. It’s easy, now, to picture him becoming what his main rival, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, already is: an MVP-winning scoring champ who may eventually be seen as the best player alive.
For Edwards, obliterating a rim protector without any regard for the laws of gravity is important. But to get where he ultimately wants to go, subtlety is king; the most important quality to support his skyscraping potential is also the most overlooked: footwork.
Advanced beyond his years and constantly improving, Edwards’s footwork is equal parts art and science, fancy and fundamental. It directly accentuates everything that makes him special—shooting, finishing, passing, ballhandling—from pretty much anywhere on the court: driving into the paint, backing his man down in the post, isolating at the elbow, or dancing behind the 3-point line.
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It’s the foundation of his skill set and also the escalator up to a level most guards in basketball history will never reach. To put it plainly: Edwards wouldn’t be the superstar he is if his freedom of movement didn’t resemble a queen on a chessboard. “Ant obviously has these superhuman, amazing abilities physically,” says Chris Hines, director of player development for the Minnesota Timberwolves. “But if he doesn’t have the right footwork and technique, then he can’t have an answer for everything.”
Before he entered the league, Edwards didn’t need those answers. But what separated him from so many others was the capacity to learn them. “He was a coordinated, raw athlete, and so the coordination gave me the canvas to say, ‘All right, dude, here’s your paint brush. Go,’” Hines says. “‘OK, you’re painting too fast. Let’s slow this down so we can … OK, now you’re painting too slow.’”
His first step could beat the click of a lighter. He could create space for himself in the midrange with a sidestep, and he already had an effective hesitation pull-up down pat. But Edwards’s natural gifts were hemmed in by his inability to function at different tempos from various locations. He couldn’t consistently escape a jam off two feet or pose the same threat after he picked up his dribble. Edwards’s game was explosive but also a bit flimsy. Today, though, “he’s just as dangerous after the dribble as he is before,” says Timberwolves guard Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
The growth is noticeable for other teammates, too. “His footwork is strong,” Timberwolves point guard Mike Conley says. “He has great balance in everything he does. He never gets rushed. He never has to take a shot he doesn't really want to have to take. That’s the most impressive part about him, is that he can get into a lot of different spots on the floor where most guys will travel or have to pick up their dribble and do something crazy. He just takes his time, finds his feet, and gets a shot off.”
There are dozens of plays that speak to this career-shifting evolution, but last season, in an otherwise random game against the Pistons, Edwards’s ultrarare combination of creativity and rigor crystallized in a sequence that can’t be fully understood without watching it at least half a dozen times. It begins ordinarily. Edwards curls off a wide pin-down, catches a pass at the elbow, and takes two dribbles toward the paint before he gets cut off by a Pistons defender.
Edwards then picks up his dribble and tries to spin back toward the sideline, but his man is ready for it. What happened over the next five seconds made fellow pros jealous (“I’m stealing it lolz,” wrote three-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson): two more half-spins, followed by a fake step-through before Ant turned back around the other way to splash in a wide-open, 10-foot jumper.
This is hypnotic deception that would seem extemporaneous if not for the countless hours Edwards has spent honing it into an ideal form. Longtime skills trainer Kierre Jordan—who started working with Ant when he was 15 years old—said the play immediately reminded him of a drill they’d done the previous offseason in Atlanta. “[Edwards] would get in the paint, and he would literally head-fake like five or six times, you know? Pump-fake, spin back out, spin back around, head-fake again,” Jordan says. “And I was like, ‘Bro, you’re gonna be in the lane for … you only get three seconds!’”
Edwards has spent the past two seasons steadily unleashing several moves that most stars don’t learn until they reach their prime (if at all), but this one captured the repetition that’s required to make an intrinsically complex move feel like second nature in an actual game. It also symbolized a before-and-after demarcation line.
For all the violently propulsive dunks and explosive zero-to-100 mph drives that force onlookers to instinctively cover gaping mouths with their palms, it proved how he’s already a maestro in the pivot, with advanced footwork that warrants the loftiest comparisons. “The greats really had [elite footwork] under their belt,” says ex-teammate Kyle Anderson. “The Kobes, the Michaels. So for him to have that at [his age] is super impressive.”
Those figures are so sacred that the comparison comes with a splash of blasphemy. But every essential box is checked. Edwards is a hyper-athletic, maniacally competitive, infectiously charming shooting guard, and so much of what justifies his similitude with basketball’s most valorized legends wouldn’t be possible if he didn’t move the same way—intensely precise with improvisational audacity. His feet pat the ground and then bounce up fast enough to conjure thoughts of a man sprinting across a lake.
The bedrock of Hines’s footwork philosophy is called “90-10.” Essentially, “if you’re a right-handed player, you utilize 90 percent [of your options] with your left pivot foot. That’s your dominant pivot foot. Your right foot is your jab foot,” he explains. “If you switch that to the opposite, now you limit yourself to 10 percent because a right-handed shooter, balance wise, can only bring the ball a certain way within the variation of shooting.” According to Hines, Edwards has already mastered that 90 percent, allowing him to counter whatever the defense throws his way:
It’s been on display in these playoffs. He tortured the switch-happy Los Angeles Lakers with a bevy of step-throughs and stepbacks that further showcased how easy he makes extremely complicated moves look and how comfortable he is getting to his spots before a defense that’s designed to slow him down can react:
He carved through the Golden State Warriors in Round 2, but against an Oklahoma City Thunder defense that clogs the paint with more discipline, length, and aggression than any unit in recent memory, Edwards has had a much harder time scoring. He’s typically forced to take what the Thunder are willing to give, which is often a pass to one of his teammates behind the 3-point line:
Whenever a path to the basket opens up, it’s usually too narrow for just about any other play to skate through. A few times in this series, Edwards has somehow managed it, though.
Hines thinks Ant’s footwork is already some of the NBA’s best. “I would put him in the top five,” he says. “I would go DeMar DeRozan, Kyrie, Steph to some degree. Book is pretty clean. I love Book’s footwork. But you know what makes Ant special is he has the raw power in his footwork. So you’ll see these Euro-steps that you’re like, ‘How the hell did you squeeze yourself through there?’ That’s kind of like a Ginóbili-esque, D-Wade, right?”
With his trainers, Edwards explores footwork as a craft. They watch tape of historical luminaries like Jordan and Kobe and attempt to steal their superpowers. They also adopt DeRozan’s work in the paint and everything Steph Curry does to create space behind the 3-point line. Mitch Richmond—a shooting guard whose body type was similar—is another blueprint. “The dude used to shed guys off the dribble, and it wasn’t his upper body,” Hines says. “Mitch used to utilize his feet to actually kill the defender, and then his body came second.” (This summer, they plan to study Steve Nash.)
Chris Farr is a professional skills trainer who started working with DeRozan in 2008. He knows what optimal footwork looks like, how monotonous the journey to flawlessness can be. When asked about Edwards, whom he admires from a distance, Farr gushes. “I just want to drop the mic because sometimes I just say, ‘Wow.’ Remember Arsenio Hall? When I watch [Edwards] sometimes, I just say, ‘things that make you go hmmmm.’ That’s what he is. He’s a hmmmm,” Farr says.
“Everything is just reinvented. [DeMar] grew up able to watch a lot of Kobe. When Jordan was hot, everybody watched Jordan. They watched his footwork. And with Ant-Man doing this? [Kids] will probably be watching him the way he’s going now.”
There’s a physical component here, too. During the summer, Edwards visits Lily Abdelmalek, a trainer who owns DSA Sports Performance in Atlanta. Through various drills that help his balance, conditioning, agility, and coordination, Edwards has developed his footwork. Abdelmalek remembers his first workout, in a group setting “with a bunch of NFL players.” Edwards didn’t like how much rest was in between each drill, so from then on, the two worked out one-on-one.
They use instability exercises to focus on proprioception—a sensory function that helps the body be more aware of its movement and positioning—and improve his balance. Sometimes they hop into a literal sandpit to make the session that much harder.
“He’s really big about keeping his feet moving,” Abdelmalek says. “Whereas a lot of guys get stuck in a position, he’s really quick about picking them up, putting them down, keeping his feet moving, being really agile, being shifty.”
All of it is intentionally designed to reflect how Edwards moves on the court. There are specific patterns—e.g., how his feet move when he’s about to execute a crossover dribble—done over and over until the speed reaches a level no defender can stop. “The more and more he does it in the right placement, in the right movement, the faster he gets at it,” she says. “It’s almost like a dancer. Let’s say a ballet dancer or a tap dancer. They start off slow until they become cognitive with what they’re doing and their muscle memory kicks in. It’s like the more they repeat certain movements, the faster they get at it.”
There are many reasons the Timberwolves have reached two straight Western Conference finals after previously making only one since they became a franchise in 1989. Edwards has a hand in most of them. He’s still years away from his prime, and no attribute lengthens the runway of his potential like his footwork does. When that’s combined with a relentless need to challenge himself, there’s no limit on where Edwards’s game can go.
“I’ve been coaching for 11 years now, and I’ve always been a guy who focused on footwork,” Hines says. “It’s my feet versus your feet. I think that’s in any sport. You play football, it’s in that sport. Play soccer, it’s in that sport. You box, it’s your footwork. … One of the things that we like to say, especially with a guy like Ant, is you have a counter to everything. And that’s kind of where we don’t put a box around him.”
There’s a story that Hines likes to tell from early in their relationship. It’s broad but speaks to Edwards’s learning curve. The Timberwolves initially wanted to focus on his 3-point shot and paint finishes. So for two workouts in a row, Hines skipped drills that focused on the midrange. “He’s like, ‘C. Hines, what you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘Man, you know, we’re trying to limit your shooting in the midrange.’ He gave me this killer look and said, ‘Dude, don’t ever limit me in shit.’ And I was like, ‘Cool, gotcha. I won’t!’ So from that point on, I never limit him in anything. I just try to improve him and what he wants to get better at. And that’s been our game plan ever since.”
There’s no lazy circumvention here. No corners are cut. There’s a world where Edwards is content with being able to jump higher and move quicker than everyone else on the court.
Instead, what the Wolves have is a franchise player who not only wants to develop every nook and cranny of his game but is smart enough to understand that true excellence isn’t possible until he literally starts at the bottom and perfects his footwork, an area that’ll never stop mattering, and may even become the skill he’s most known for someday. The gift that stops the show.
