You weren't the only one still mesmerized by Anthony Edwards' instant-classic poster dunk over John Collins long after the play was finished. In the postgame locker room, the Minnesota Timberwolves teammates couldn't quite believe what their superstar teammate did, either.
Minnesota released a video on Tuesday featuring slack-jawed, locker-room reactions to Edwards' all-time highlight from Mike Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and more.
“That's the dunk of the decade, bruh,” Conley said. “The dunk of the decade.”
“I was the only one pointing at him!” Daishen Nix said of his real-time response from the bench. “For sure, dunk of the year.”
“As I threw it, he just took off. Like he didn't dribble, he just…I was ready to fight! I was mad, bro! I was pissed off,” Alexander-Walker, who got the assist on Edwards' slam, said.
“That's the craziest thing I've ever seen in person,” Wendell Moore Jr. said.
Minnesota's post-win locker-room breakdown said it all. Instead of closing the book on their victory over the Jazz with a typical, in-unison chant like ‘Together!' or ‘Wolves!,' the Timberwolves broke their celebratory huddle with Edwards' signature Adidas catchphrase.
“‘Hey, ‘Believe that!' on three,” Edwards said to his teammates, before they all yelled, “BELIEVE THAT!”
“That’s dunk of the decade, bruh.”
Mike Conley and the Timberwolves react to Anthony Edwards’ poster slam over John Collins 😂
(via @Timberwolves) pic.twitter.com/WE6g2NOLwB
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) March 19, 2024
Anthony Edwards ‘putting Wolves on his back' without Karl-Anthony Towns
Edwards' initial response to seeing video of his dunk went viral almost as quickly as the highlight itself. He wasn't just caught up in the moment, either. Speaking with reporters after the game, the fourth-year veteran insisted it was the ‘best dunk' of his career.
“Hell yeah. What you think? Hell yeah,” Edwards said, per Chris Hine of the Star Tribune. “That was better than the Toronto one, hell yeah. Because the Toronto one, everybody expected me to dunk on him. This one was crazy.”
Told he didn't even touch the rim on his dunk over Collins, Edwards suggested that's what makes it all the more special.
“That’s what I’m sayin’,” he said. “I was thinking I was gonna miss it because I wasn’t close to the rim, but somehow God willed it in for me.”
No one in basketball has provided more spectacular highlights than Edwards in 2023-24. It wasn't even two weeks that his game-saving block of Aaron Nesmith—on which his head literally hit the rim—broke the internet, sending Minnesota to hard-fought victory over the Indiana Pacers.
Don't assume the 22-year-old's increasingly epic highlight reel has come at the expense of his all-around impact on winning, though. Edwards isn't just proving his case as the best overall athlete in the NBA this season, but one of the league's top two-way players. He finished with 32 points, seven rebounds, eight assists and two blocks on 13-of-23 shooting against Utah, scoring or assisting on 42 of Minnesota's 61 points in the second half—much of that production coming after he dislocated his finger on the dunk.
Minnesota is now 4-2 since Karl-Anthony Towns went down with a torn meniscus, keeping pace with Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets for the top playoff seed in the Western Conference. Edwards has taken his game to even loftier heights over that timeframe, averaging 31.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, five assists and 1.7 steals and blocks per game, doing all he can to will the shorthanded Wolves to victory.
“That's what a leader does, man. He's putting his team on his back,” Conley said of Edwards, per Hine. “He's putting us first and he's putting his health aside and saying, ‘Hey, it's an important stretch for us. We need to get these wins. We need to get some confidence building up into the playoffs. Just get more and more respect.'
“I'm his biggest fan,” the 36-year-old veteran continued. “He won me over again tonight not just the dunk, but dislocating his finger, g0ing back there taping it up, finishing the game how he did. Those are stories I'll be telling people when I'm old and gray.”
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