Anthony Edwards gets called out after Wolves’ Game 1 dud: ‘It starts with Ant’

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MINNEAPOLIS — It wasn’t just the missed shots for Anthony Edwards. It was stepping out of bounds in the third quarter when he had no one near him. It was getting back slowly on defense after missing a layup, which led to a wide-open corner 3-pointer from Gary Payton II. It was leaving the only real shooter the Golden State Warriors had on the floor at a crucial moment of the fourth quarter, giving Buddy Hield a clean look at a 3 that pushed a nine-point lead to 12 and ended any hope of a Minnesota Timberwolves comeback.

For a player who was so mature, so ruthless and so dynamic in the first-round knockout of the Los Angeles Lakers, Edwards got off to the worst start of his playoff career in a 99-88 loss to the Warriors that gave Golden State a 1-0 lead in their second-round series.

Edwards did not score until he made one free throw with 1:04 to play in the first half. He didn’t make his first field goal until he scored on a driving layup with 8:02 to play in the third quarter. He finished the night with 23 points on 9-of-22 shooting but missed his first 10 shots of the game and also had three turnovers and only two assists.

He was the best player on the floor in the first round, a series that included LeBron James and Luka Dončić. In the first game of the second round, he was outplayed when it mattered most by Jimmy Butler, and he was outshot by Draymond Green.

It all led to a searing assessment from Wolves coach Chris Finch after the game.

“It starts with Ant,” Finch said. “I thought he struggled, and then you could just kind of see the light go out a little bit for a while. Then, obviously, we had to try to get him going in the second half. I think it was one of those games where he kind of came out with a predetermined mindset of what he was trying to do rather than just play the game that was in front of him.”

Through their five seasons together, Finch and Edwards have learned how to coexist. Finch has thanked Edwards over and over again for allowing him to coach him hard, to call him out publicly and in film sessions, to challenge him to raise his level of play when it dips. The coach was clearly frustrated with his star player after the game, believing that his lack of energy trickled down to the rest of the team during one of their worst performances of the season.

“What is there to talk about? You’re the leader of the team. You’ve got to come out and set the tone,” Finch said. “If your shot is not going, you still have to carry the energy. If I’ve got to talk to guys about having the right energy coming into an opening second-round game, then we’re not on the same page.”

The Wolves shot 39.5 percent from the field, were 5 of 29 (17.2 percent) from 3-point range and were out-rebounded by the smaller Warriors, 51-41.

The offensive ineptitude prevented them from capitalizing on a golden opportunity. Stephen Curry played only 13 minutes, leaving the game in the second quarter with a strained hamstring. Without him, the Warriors couldn’t generate a lot of offense in their own right. They shot 39.1 percent and turned it over 18 times. But they did hit 18 of 42 3s, including an uncharacteristic 4 of 10 by Green.

If Green is going to make more 3s than Edwards throughout the series, the Wolves are in trouble, Steph or no Steph. Edwards missed at least five layups, continuing on a theme for most of this season of having trouble finishing at the rim.

“A lot of those layups I missed, I gotta finish,” Edwards said.

He scored 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting in the second half, but by then it was too late. The Wolves trailed by as many as 23 points and never got closer than nine in the fourth quarter, thanks in part to a defensive breakdown from Edwards on Hield that essentially sealed the win for Golden State.

That was smoooooth, Buddy

📺 @NBAonTNT pic.twitter.com/Yb3vWcXlKy

— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) May 7, 2025

The man who led the NBA in 3-pointers made during the regular season is 1 of 16 from deep in his last two games. The Timberwolves, who finished fourth in the league in 3-point percentage, are 12 of 76 (15.8 percent) on 3s in their last two games, the worst two-game number in playoff history for a team with over 50 attempts.

“Tonight we didn’t shoot the ball well, but tonight is over, so next game we’ll shoot the ball really well,” Edwards said.

Edwards wasn’t chucking 3s wildly in this one, unlike his 0 of 11 performance in Game 5 against the Lakers. In fact, the 29 3s were reflective of a team that stopped trying to break through from behind the arc and started attacking the rim in the second half. The Wolves outscored the Warriors 52-28 in the paint, Julius Randle shot 10 free throws because of his aggressiveness going to the basket, and Edwards only took two 3s in the second half.

“Tonight, he did a good job of getting downhill and making the right reads and didn’t really finish,” Mike Conley said. “Things weren’t going his way early, and we can’t expect that to happen going forward.”

Edwards was far from the lone culprit on Tuesday night. After a banner series against the Lakers, Randle was just 4 of 11, including 0 of 3 on 3s. He had as many turnovers (three) as rebounds in 31 minutes, unacceptable for a player who uses his physicality to dictate games.

“I can’t come from this game playing 30 minutes and have three rebounds, so I’ve got to play better,” Randle said.

Conley was scoreless on 0-of-5 shooting in 22 minutes. Donte DiVincenzo missed six of his seven 3s and was 3 of 11 overall with four turnovers. Nickeil Alexander-Walker was 0 of 3 and a minus-13 in 14 minutes. Naz Reid was the only bright spot, scoring 19 points on 8-of-14 shooting.

Finch called their transition offense “diabolical” and said they were “making stuff up out there” on defense. He deserves scrutiny as well for the team’s flat start and his resistance to extending his rotation in the second half when it was clear his preferred eight players didn’t have it. In an odd sequence in the first half when Reid was hobbled and could barely get up the floor, Finch declined to call a timeout or instruct one of his players to commit a foul so they could get him out of the game. Reid did, eventually, return to the game, and remained effective, but the entire team did not look ready to play, inexcusable for a game of this magnitude.

“It didn’t look like us at all. It didn’t feel like us at all,” Finch said. “All credit to them. They came in and took it to us.”

The Warriors were coming off an exhausting Game 7 win in Houston on Sunday, but they were by far the better team on Tuesday. Golden State had 18 offensive rebounds, and Butler scored or assisted on all 19 points in the fourth quarter to hold off the Wolves’ comeback attempt. The victory meant all four road teams won Game 1 of the second round, an anomaly that does little to ease the Wolves’ stomachs.

Wolves fans were fired up at the start of the game, coming into Target Center looking for a pound of flesh to take out of Green and Butler, the two most dastardly villains in Minnesota’s basketball universe. Both were booed regularly throughout the game, but as the Timberwolves kept clanking shots and getting beaten to loose balls, the angst started to turn toward the home team.

Minnesota pulled within 66-53 with four minutes to go in the third quarter, but Butler and Hield hit back-to-back 3s, Pat Spencer made a hook shot, and Green hit a pair of free throws to push the lead back to 23. The Wolves got as close as 85-76 midway through the fourth quarter, but Hield hit the fourth of his five 3s and Butler scored on a driving floater to push the cushion to 14 points less than a minute later.

BUTLER OFF THE WINDOW 🪟 pic.twitter.com/fWqKeu94pt

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) May 7, 2025

The Wolves had six days between their defeat of the Lakers and their opener against the Warriors, and that may have played a role in the night. The Wolves just did not look as sharp as they did against Los Angeles, and Rudy Gobert said afterward that their loathsome habit of relaxing after things start going well may have played a role in the flat opener.

“We respect these guys, but I think subconsciously there is something where maybe you get a little comfortable,” Gobert said. “And it’s not supposed to get easier. It’s getting harder. So we got to have that mindset.”

The Timberwolves may be just fine. Curry was limping out of Target Center after the game, and coach Steve Kerr said the Warriors are operating under the assumption that he will miss at least Game 2 on Thursday. If he misses multiple games, or the rest of the series, it is hard to see how the Warriors will muster the offense needed to win three more games.

But that’s what made Game 1 so frustrating. The Warriors did not play exceedingly well, with all of their missed shots and turnovers. It likely would have taken a B-minus game from the Wolves to pull this one out. Instead, they are staring down the barrel of a 1-0 deficit, having handed home-court advantage, and a whole lot of confidence, over to the Warriors.

Giving away a very gettable game like this one is inviting trouble right into the house to pull up a chair and stay a while. Butler and Green are absurdly competitive, undeniably prideful and incredibly smart. They can dissect the Wolves’ issues and exploit their weaknesses.

Hield may be one of the more inconsistent players in the league, but if he gets on a roll, he can fill it up with the best of them. Just ask the Rockets after he hit nine 3s in Game 7. Maybe Brandin Podziemski shakes out of his shooting slump or Moses Moody has a monster game. Weird things happen in the playoffs.

Add to it that the Timberwolves are a team that consistently falls flat when an opponent is missing a star player, and they should be approaching Game 2 as a must-win. This is a team that lost to the Milwaukee Bucks without Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, to the Indiana Pacers without four starters, including Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner, and to the Miami Heat without Butler. They also went 1-3 against the Warriors in the regular season, every game of which was played pre-Butler trade, when the Warriors were really struggling.

The Wolves’ dud in Game 1 gave a wounded team reason to believe. The last thing that Green and Butler need is an opening. When Curry limped to the locker room in the second quarter, the Wolves should have smelled the blood in the water. Instead, they’re in a dogfight now with two pit bulls who may have some gray on their jowls, but can still bite when challenged.

“They were playing like their life depended on it since the beginning of the game, and I didn’t feel that for us early on,” Gobert said. “And then obviously we got a little down, we got a little behind and we (couldn’t keep) up.”

What the Wolves learned is that the Warriors are not the Lakers. Golden State has had the No. 1 defense in the league since Butler arrived in February. It is active and tenacious, and a second straight trip to the conference finals will be anything but easy for Minnesota. Curry or no Curry, the Warriors are going to demand precision and intensity from the Wolves to beat them.

Edwards has always responded well when called out by Finch. This was one of his most pointed public critiques yet. How Edwards responds could tell the tale of this series.

“I just look at every last one of us gotta play better individually, including myself, and we’ll see how it go,” Edwards said. “You can’t blame. … It’s a game, man. You just gotta play better individually and see what it do for us.”

(Photo: Abbie Parr / AP)

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