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DENVER — Restraint rarely goes viral. Restraint doesn’t sell sneakers. Restraint can be misinterpreted by college recruiters and NBA scouts. In most cases, the American basketball system rewards statistical production, athleticism and fearlessness over patience and subtlety. Getting buckets is the surest path to YouTube attention, recruiting rankings, scholarship offers, high draft picks and maximum contracts.

Anthony Edwards is a product of this system: The Minnesota Timberwolves guard was selected first <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/11/19/nba-draft-2020-winners-losers/" target=_blank>in the 2020 draft</a> thanks to his scoring instincts, confidence, speed and leaping ability. During his one-and-done college season at Georgia, he committed nearly as many turnovers as assists while launching almost 16 shots per game with mediocre efficiency. Edwards’s tools were indisputable; his feel for the game was very much in dispute.

Four years later, Edwards is in a much different place. The two-time all-star scored a game-high 43 points to go with seven rebounds and three assists while leading the Timberwolves to a 106-99 victory over the Denver Nuggets in Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinal series Saturday night. In a high-profile showdown with the defending champions, who knocked out the Timberwolves in last year’s first round, the 22-year-old Edwards showed he has learned a crucial hoops lesson: Restraint is an underrated virtue that translates into playoff wins.

Meet the new-and-improved Edwards, a 6-foot-4 brick wall who swishes midrange turnarounds with ease, drills three-pointers off the dribble, rises high to dunk over centers and, perhaps most importantly, understands there are moments when it’s best for the team if he downshifts.

“We trust each other,” Edwards said after Minnesota improved to 5-0 in the playoffs. “It doesn’t matter down the stretch who takes the shot. Just find the open guy. Everybody’s put the work in. I trust my teammates, and I can’t wait to pass it to them if they’re open.”

After an impressive first-round <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/04/29/suns-timberwolves-sweep-bradley-beal/" target=_blank>sweep of the Phoenix Suns</a>, Edwards strode into Denver’s mile-high elevation as if he had oxygen tanks with unlimited refills strapped to his back. Though the Nuggets entered Saturday with an intimidating 13-1 home playoff record since the start of their 2023 title run, an undaunted Edwards hit a three-pointer for the game’s first points and staked the Timberwolves to a 9-0 lead.

He was just getting started: Edwards scored 13 of his team’s first 16 points, and Minnesota’s lead ballooned to 18-4. With the Timberwolves’ auxiliary shooters slow to warm up and center Rudy Gobert unable to find room to work inside, Edwards kept pouring it on. By halftime, he had outscored his teammates 25-15 and shot 10 for 17 while they combined to shoot 6 for 27. But Denver had methodically erased Minnesota’s early lead and taken a 44-40 lead into the break.

“It was the Anthony Edwards show,” Nuggets Coach Michael Malone said. “But we were up.”

Phil Jackson famously spent years pleading with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant to lean on their teammates for help, and the Basketball Hall of Fame has plenty of inductees who never bothered to take that lesson to heart.

During last year’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/09/04/usa-basketball-fiba-world-cup/" target=_blank>FIBA World Cup</a>, Edwards earned a starting spot and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/08/05/anthony-edwards-usa-basketball/" target=_blank>unexpectedly emerged as USA Basketball’s lead scoring option</a> through force of will. Once the competition ramped up, though, Edwards repeatedly lost track of the team concept as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/09/11/fiba-world-cup-winners-and-losers/" target=_blank>Americans finished a disappointing fourth</a> despite a roster loaded with NBA talent.

Saturday’s slow start for his teammates presented a major test for Edwards, who has emerged as the breakout player of this postseason. Here, in the most important game of his young career and in front of a hostile crowd, would he choose to bear the full weight of the adversity on his shoulders?

Rather than reverting to hero ball, Edwards bided his time in the third quarter. Karl-Anthony Towns, invisible to that point, scored five quick buckets out of the break. Mike Conley, scoreless at halftime, added four baskets in the period.

The Timberwolves shot 74 percent and scored 33 points in the momentum-swinging third quarter, frustrating the Nuggets’ defense with their ball movement and outside shooting. Edwards’s restraint made it possible: He took just one shot in the first eight minutes after halftime, clearing the way for Towns and Conley to get involved.

To close out the Nuggets, who have a well-earned reputation as fourth-quarter chess masters, the Timberwolves used a scoring burst from backup big man Naz Reid before Edwards brought it home. Reid scored 14 of his 16 points in the final period, including a banked-in three-pointer that broke a tie midway through.

“I don’t know how many points [Edwards] scored in that third quarter, but Karl got going and the other guys got going,” Malone said. “That’s when the [Timberwolves] become really dangerous. Now you have three scorers and four scorers, and that can’t be the case. It will be a quick [playoff] exit if we allow four guys to get off like that.”

Sensing he should reassert himself in crunchtime, Edwards scored eight of Minnesota’s final 10 points against a Denver defense that had sprung too many leaks and couldn’t contain him. After carefully milking the shot clock, Edwards hit a high-arcing fadeaway jumper to deliver the dagger with less than two minutes to play.

Edwards finds himself in an unusual position as the young face of the veteran-dominated Timberwolves, who won 56 games in the regular season and are starting to look capable of reaching the NBA Finals for the first time. Most players his age are cutting their teeth in painful rebuilding seasons or deferring to their elders as they pay their dues. The last rising superstar to hold such an empowered role for a title team was Dwyane Wade, then 24, on the 2005-06 Miami Heat.

“I’m just really proud of the way [Edwards] has accepted the kind of growth he needed to have to be where he’s at right now,” said Conley, a 17-year veteran. “A lot of that has to do with understanding the game better and understanding how to play off his teammates when the [opponents] are doubling him. It’s not easy for a 22-year-old to make that adjustment so quickly. He’s a fast learner.”

Minnesota has a long way to go to dethrone the Nuggets, who can expect much better play from Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray in Monday’s Game 2. Still, Edwards has brought genuine hope to a once-hopeless franchise that made the playoffs only one time in the 16 seasons before he was drafted. With three more wins, Minnesota would reach the Western Conference finals for the first time since Kevin Garnett, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell got there in 2004.

“It was 20 years ago,” Edwards smiled. “I probably wasn’t even born.”

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Ben Golliver joined The Washington Post as the National NBA Writer in 2018. An Oregon native, he lives and works in Los Angeles.

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