MINNEAPOLIS — Anthony Edwards’ rise to stardom has been filled with symbols along the way.
The No. 5 on his jersey is sacred to the Edwards family, a nod to his mother, Yvette, and grandmother, Shirley, both lost to cancer when he was 14 years old, both passing on the fifth day of a month. The first colorway of his AE 1 signature shoe was peach, synonymous with his native Georgia and Shirley’s favorite color. The Adidas logo on the heel was pink, Yvette’s favorite.
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Wolves fans have noticed a new symbol this season as the team climbed out of the struggles endured early on to make a run to the Western Conference finals. It is an orange bracelet that Edwards wears on his left wrist. It was a gift from 6-year-old Luca Wright, a Michigan boy with leukemia who first crossed paths with Edwards and the Timberwolves in January, when they were at one of their lowest moments of the season.
“It means everything,” Edwards said. “It means the world to me.”
The wristband has become a bit of a sensation with Minnesota fans, its arrival coinciding with the Wolves’ rise from a team once flailing to adjust to a major preseason trade to one that became one of the best in the league — from a net rating and record standpoint — over the last quarter of the season.
When Edwards first met Luca in Detroit on Jan. 4, after his Wolves played the Pistons, Edwards promised to always wear it on the court. Ever since, the Wright family has been deluged by requests for the little rubber bracelet, which says “Love Like Luca,” from Wolves fans taken by the story of Luca’s connection with Edwards.
“Never, ever did we dream that Ant would put it on and be like, ‘You know what, buddy, I’m gonna wear this for you,’” said Lacey Wright, Luca’s mother. “It’s just been amazing, and Luca watches and he loves that. He talks about him literally daily.”
For Luca, the encounter with a star and team he had never known much about has been “a game changer,” his mother said. He has always been drawn to the game, becoming enamored with Michael Jordan after watching the original “Space Jam,” and never misses a chance to hoop with his father.
“Basketball has gotten him through,” Lacey said. “It kept him strong. It was something that he looked forward to. He’d be in the hospital for eight hours with chemo, and then he’d come home and shoot hoops with his dad. Basketball has always been very, very important to him.”
It all started with a prompt around the turn of the year from popular social media influencer Zachery Dereniowski, known on YouTube and Instagram as MDMotivator, looking for a child who loved basketball in the Detroit area. A friend of Lacey’s sister nominated Luca and told Dereniowski of his basketball fandom and the long, hard road following his leukemia diagnosis, which came Dec. 21, 2023, when Luca was 5.
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Dereniowski contacted Lacey’s sister, and it moved quickly. On Jan. 2, he arranged a surprise for Luca and his father, Jeffrey, when the two were shopping at a local Dollar Tree store. Dereniowski offered Luca $1,000 cash or a mystery basketball. Ever the hooper, Luca chose the basketball, and was awarded courtside tickets to a game between the Detroit Pistons and Timberwolves just two days later.
Jaclyn Cordeiro, the girlfriend of Wolves owner Alex Rodriguez, is friends with Dereniowski and lives in the same area as the Wrights. When she got word of the situation, she coordinated with Edwards’ team to organize a meet and greet after the game.
The timing was perfect, Lacey said. Had the game been a month earlier, Luca would not have physically been up for going. The treatments he received were putting his body through the wringer.
“There’s times that he couldn’t walk. He couldn’t get up from the floor,” she said. “We had to carry him to the bathroom or get him dressed.”
But by January, Luca had graduated to a maintenance phase of treatment, and his body was responding well. His parents knew that getting him to a game would be good for his soul, as well as theirs.
They had no idea the night would end with Luca in the Wolves locker room handing out bracelets to players.
“It just set a whole different kind of fire in him because he is obsessed with basketball,” Lacey said.
As much as Luca wanted to meet the Wolves, the players probably needed to meet Luca even more. They had just finished a demoralizing, 119-105 loss to the Pistons, their third straight defeat, to fall to 17-17 on the season. At that point, the season had been filled with fits and starts, not what anyone was expecting coming off a run to the conference finals in 2024.
Edwards was extremely frustrated. He took only 16 shots in a loss to the Boston Celtics on Jan. 2, then said after that he was not having fun playing against defenses that were loading up on him and forcing him to pass. That was an alarming statement for a player known for radiating joy on the basketball court. Seemingly trying to prove a point, Edwards took 31 shots against the Pistons, hit 10 3s and racked up 53 points. But it all came in a decisive loss.
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Luca waited for Edwards after the game. Edwards set aside his frustrations and came out of the locker room to meet Luca, who gave him the orange wristband, the color used to represent leukemia awareness. As Edwards slipped it over his hand, he made Luca a promise.
“I’ll wear this for the rest of my career,” he told the boy.
Edwards made a promise to Luca to wear the wristband for the rest of his career. (Photo courtesy of Francisco Manzano / Minnesota Timberwolves)
Edwards then walked Luca into the Wolves locker room and introduced him to everyone. Edwards wasn’t the only one in his feelings at the time. Julius Randle was struggling to find his own groove in the Wolves offense. Donte DiVincenzo was adjusting to coming off the bench after starting with the New York Knicks last season. Mike Conley was having a hard time finding his shot.
“It was a tough part of the year,” Conley said. “We had not played our best ball, and guys were hanging their heads for a lot of other reasons on the court. Then a kid walks in with their family, and it’s like a ball of energy walked in and a light turned on. You forget about the game for a second, and you focus on this kid.”
Seeing a child going through a life-threatening health situation gave many of the Wolves some needed grounding to reality. They smiled, shook his hand and also asked for wristbands.
“Seeing him come in the locker room with Ant and hear his story, it put everything in perspective for myself,” Nickeil Alexander-Walker said. “Life is too short to worry about a basketball game. When you have kids who are dreaming just trying to do things that a normal kid should do, go through struggles that are deeper than basketball, it touched me to see him in that moment, and it brought me back down to earth.”
From that moment forward, the Wolves went 32-16 to surge to the sixth seed in the Western Conference, avoiding the Play-In Tournament. They posted the fifth-best offensive rating and sixth-best defensive rating over that span. Only the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Celtics won more games. They went 8-2 in the first two rounds of the playoffs to advance to back-to-back conference finals for the first time in franchise history.
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There are a million reasons the Wolves found their groove over those final 48 games, all much more directly related to basketball than an orange rubber bracelet. Randle missed time with an injury and came back with a new understanding of where he fit in the Minnesota ecosystem. Conley started to round into form. DiVincenzo asserted himself as a gritty two-way guard off the bench. Coach Chris Finch started to find out what made the team click.
But the NBA season is a long, grueling affair. The Wolves were not even at the halfway point and were grinding their teeth in search of answers when they met Luca.
Did it start the winning streak? Probably not. Did the Wolves need a reality check? Most definitely.
“Let’s go out there and play ball, have fun,” Conley remembered thinking in that moment. “This is a dream job, a dream opportunity. This kid would love to be in our shoes one day. Take advantage of it. Ant’s really held on to that. I think it’s boosted him a little bit and a lot of other guys, as well.”
Luca’s meeting with the Timberwolves in Detroit was just the beginning of the relationship. Dereniowski reached out to the NBA to organize a trip to San Francisco for the All-Star Game in February, and Luca surprised Edwards there at a news conference.
Luca made his maiden voyage to Target Center for Game 5 of the Wolves’ second-round series against the Golden State Warriors. He wore an Edwards All-Star jersey from San Francisco, in addition to big, wrap-around shades similar to Edwards’.
“I was shooting, and his dad was holding him up, and I didn’t realize it until two or three minutes left when we were warming up,” Edwards said after scoring 22 points and dishing out 12 assists to close out the Warriors. “He was fly. He had the glasses on, the jersey, the wristband. He was fly as hell tonight. Shout-out Luca. I love Luca.”
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Wolves fans recognized him immediately. A group prayed with him and his father for Luca’s recovery, and Luca handed out wristbands to anyone who asked, hundreds of them.
“It just made him feel so special,” Lacey said. “He told me one time, ‘You know, Mom, I’m famous.’ I think at that point, he realized that it’s bigger than just him getting to meet a player.”
The movement has only seemed to gather momentum as the Wolves have advanced through the playoffs. When Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James made contact with Edwards’ wrist and the bracelet ripped off him in the first round of the playoffs, fans worried online about Edwards losing his good luck charm.
Never fear. Edwards’ best friend, Nick Maddox, reached out to the family shortly after they first met to ask for as many extras as they could provide. They are kept on the Wolves bench, just in case one rips or breaks.
During a crucial replay review late in Game 4 against the Lakers, referees tried to determine if James had fouled Edwards on the wrist before Edwards lost the ball out of bounds. Officials determined that James fouled Edwards, which prevented the Lakers from getting the ball back in a game the Wolves won 116-113.
Did LeBron James really foul Anthony Edwards 👀‼️🤔 #NBAPlayoffs2025
NBA Hawkeye Camera 🎥
Los Angeles Lakers vs Minnesota Timberwolves 🏀 pic.twitter.com/2AI7zjlSLj
— WC Sports TV 🎥 (@wcsportsx) April 27, 2025
While it is unlikely that the wristband played a role in the call, the thousands of amateur replay review artists on social media said they could see it move. In their eyes, perhaps while looking through Wolves-tinted glasses, it meant James must have made contact with Edwards’ wrist. Many knew that it was Luca’s wristband.
Like any child of this generation, seeing his name and his wristband on social media has him swelling with swagger.
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“With him being so young, I know that he understands it, but I don’t know that he will fully grasp the magnitude of it until he’s older,” Lacey said. “I think he’s just going to be able to look back and be like, wow, that was really, really special.”
That is the best news of all. By all indications, Luca will be living a long, healthy life, Lacey said. His body has responded well to the treatments. His last one is scheduled for February of next year. He is playing youth baseball, going to school and living as close to a normal life as possible.
Now, everyone hopes that wristband has a little bit of magic left in it. Edwards and the Wolves are down 2-0 to the top-seeded Thunder in the conference finals. They looked overmatched in the two games in Oklahoma City, and it almost feels like they need something bigger than basketball to get them back in this series, starting with Game 3 at Target Center on Saturday.
Luca will be watching from afar while he gears up for a milestone. He will turn 7 next week, and the family is planning a big celebration. He did not have a birthday party last year because he was too sick.
“So, he’s having the big birthday party this year. It’s Timberwolves-themed. It’s just …,” Lacey said, her throat catching, “This is all just so cool.”
(Top illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; David Berding / Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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