Anthony Edwards, Timberwolves fans will have to block out the looming trade rumors

Anthony Edwards is under contract for three more seasons but that won't stop the rumors. David Berding / Getty Images

MINNEAPOLIS — Brace yourselves, Minnesota Timberwolves fans. They’re coming for Anthony Edwards.

Now that Giannis Antetokounmpo has finally been traded from Milwaukee to Miami, the machine will need to be fed. Basketball discourse cannot survive without daily speculation on some poor superstar who is stuck in a mid-sized market and absolutely has to get out.

Oh, it will stop if Edwards wins a championship in Minnesota, right? Or, at the very least, when Edwards signs another maximum contract extension it will quiet the mob? No, no, no. Just look to your neighbors to the east. They will tell you that nothing will stop the trade machine from churning.

It has already started. Antetokounmpo has not even gotten any South Beach sand between his toes and we’ve already moved on to the next potential transaction on which to fixate. The Timberwolves took a step back as a team last season, and it gets really cold here in the winter. Ergo, Edwards needs to get out and go to somewhere he can win a championship, preferably in a city with gridlock traffic and an impossibly high cost of living.

It doesn’t matter that Edwards is under contract for three more years. It doesn’t matter that he has made the most money a player his age could possibly make in the NBA. It doesn’t matter that, according to multiple people with knowledge of Edwards’ thinking, the Timberwolves star is not flinching at the challenge ahead and believes the team has a bright future ahead of it. It doesn’t matter that the Timberwolves have put a veteran team around him with good leaders that has won five playoff series in the last three years.

That was yesterday, when everyone could focus on getting Giannis the heck out of Milwaukee. Now that he is gone, another breathless monitoring of a player’s future has to take its place.

There is no sense in fighting it or getting mad about it. This is what drives so much NBA content at the macro level. Not analysis of the games, not human interest stories on the players, but salacious searches for the next star being failed by the mom-and-pop franchises that exist only to develop talent and feed it to the overlords in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Miami.

This is not a complaint. This is not a local writer rising to the defense of the team he covers. This is simply an acknowledgement of the world in which the Timberwolves, and Timberwolves fans, live. It will not be changing anytime soon. There is no grand epiphany that is coming to cool the hot takery that infects the social media-soaked league.

So there are two options:

1. Wolves fans can pull their hair out over every video clip, TikTok post or podcast pontification that suggests Edwards’ days in Minnesota are numbered. They can rage against the machine.
2. Accept it and not let it ruin your life. Understand that this is going to be unrelenting, but it also cannot be completely ignored.

As annoying as the speculation can be, there is some truth under the bluster. When a team has a star player as talented as Edwards, it is always on the clock. Edwards will not turn 25 until August and he has already been on the doorstep of the NBA Finals twice. He has shown the Wolves how committed he is to winning by playing through pain in the playoffs to try to give his team the best chance to win. That success has raised the expectations in Minnesota. The Wolves are obligated to do everything they can to maximize their great fortune of having him on their roster.

Edwards is happy in Minnesota. Despite his global reach as one of the most popular young players in the league, a signature pitchman for Adidas, Sprite and more, and his supporting role in Adam Sandler’s move “Hustle,” Edwards enjoys relative solitude here. He likes to go to work and then return to his home with his family and friends unbothered, and that is exactly what he is allowed to do.

He is tight with many of his teammates, particularly with Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid. He quickly grew to admire Ayo Dosunmu’s game after the guard was acquired from Chicago in February, and Dosunmu is returning on a five-year, $112 million contract. He has also built a strong relationship with Wolves co-owner Alex Rodriguez, affording the franchise a level of trust in their star player’s eyes.

None of that guarantees anything, but it’s a good foundation on which to build.

It isn’t just media talking heads who love to play this card. Executives across the NBA are constantly combing the rosters to see where the next vulnerability will surface, where the next star player can be swiped. As soon as the Timberwolves were eliminated by San Antonio in the second round of the playoffs last month, front office personnel from other teams started to check in with me, wondering about Edwards’ patience with the Timberwolves’ direction. The game is the game.

Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly said after the first round of the draft on Tuesday night that he is in constant contact with Edwards to get his read on the needs of the roster and the path forward. He said he visited Edwards at his home in the Minneapolis suburbs not long after the season ended to have a long and open conversation on the direction of the team.

“Ant has great wisdom,” Connelly said. “Anything we do, he’s going to be part and parcel to it.”

One of Connelly’s strengths as a lead executive is his ability to communicate and connect with players. He has built a strong bond with Edwards since he was hired away from Denver four years ago, and Edwards trusts Connelly to consider his viewpoints and put together a team worthy of contention.

“We think he can go down as one of the best players of all time,” Connelly said. “So his input is invaluable. All players’ input from our team, there’s things they see that we simply don’t see. We’re very fortunate that he’s a guy that knows the league, knows players and loudly shares his opinions.”

Edwards is one of the most competitive players in the league, and the Timberwolves are trying to match that spirit with an aggression when it comes to team building. Connelly has pursued Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant in the last few years and will keep looking for ways to supplement the roster.

The speculation ramped up this week when the Wolves sent Julius Randle to Brooklyn in a salary dump, getting nothing in return for a player who averaged 21.1 points, 6.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists last season. Randle struggled mightily in the Spurs series, and getting off of his $33 million does give the Wolves much more flexibility to make additional moves while opening up more opportunities for McDaniels and Reid. But they are a less talented team today than they were before the move, so they have to utilize that flexibility to bolster the roster.

Connelly described his mood as “super, super excited” when he spoke recently about where the team is headed. Edwards told him he has been looking forward to seeing McDaniels and Reid get more responsibility, and now there are more shots and minutes to go around. While not speaking about specific deals, Connelly said Edwards had been presented with some possibilities that the star discouraged because of how much he believes in some of the teammates that would have had to go out the door.

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One of the reasons the Wolves were unable to complete a trade for Antetokounmpo is that they resisted the Bucks’ demands that McDaniels be included in the deal, a team source said.

“I think the whole room is excited,” Connelly said. “I think we’re ready to continue to try to take the next step. But Ant’s just such a competitive guy. He wants to make sure we’re moving in the right direction and we keep getting better and better.”

Connelly said on Tuesday night that the Timberwolves were trying to get back into the first round when a few players they liked started to fall, but they were unable to complete a deal. One of those players, team sources who have been granted anonymity to discuss nonpublic information said, was Alabama guard Labaron Philon, who went to Philadelphia at No. 22.

The Wolves currently have pick Nos. 33 and 59 in the second round on Wednesday night, but their biggest opportunity to improve the roster will come via trades and free agency. The Randle trade put the Wolves under the luxury tax line, meaning they can use the full mid-level exception to sign a free agent that could immediately slide into the rotation. They also created a $33 million trade exception, which they could use to take on a player without sending salary out.

Couple that with internal development of young players like Terrence Shannon Jr., Joan Beringer and Jaylen Clark and the Timberwolves believe they are showing Edwards that they are serious about winning in the West.

The Wolves know they have much more to do to get back in the conversation for another conference finals run. The best approach for them, and their fans, is to put their heads down, block out the noise and get to work.

Jun 24, 2026

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