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MINNEAPOLIS, MN. — One of the Phoenix Suns’ biggest keys to their first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves was trying to contain Anthony Edwards. They were terrific on that front during the regular season, holding him to 43 points on 42 shots in their three matchups.
As we covered extensively earlier this week, the Suns shrunk Ant-Man’s production by shading over on his driving lanes, always showing him a crowd, and maintaining their tight shell on defense while still retreating back out to shooters.
Unfortunately for the Suns, they failed to keep lightning trapped in the bottle for a full four quarters in Game 1 on Saturday, and the result was being thunderstruck by a third-quarter detonation that saw their halftime deficit double from 10 points to 20.
Edwards finished with a game-high 33 points on 14-of-24 shooting in the Wolves’ 120-95 Game 1 victory, chipping in 9 rebounds, 6 assists and 4-of-8 shooting from downtown for good measure. It was a dominant performance from the 22-year-old superstar that garnered the attention of the basketball world, including that of a former Timberwolves legend:
The question is, what went so wrong for Phoenix? How did Ant break loose for 18 points in that third quarter to blow Game 1 wide open, and what can the Suns do better in Game 2?
When Edwards took on more playmaking duties for Minnesota earlier in the season, one of his biggest struggles was learning to get off the ball rather than try and bully his way through double-teams.
It’s natural for a young, ascending scorer to try and force the issue, but as time went on, he learned to trust the pass in those situations, and Minnesota’s offense took off at that point.
Against the Suns, however, he had reverted to some old tendencies — some of it being Ant’s fault, and some of it just being an exceptional job of showing help and sending doubles on Phoenix’s part.
“Yeah, he’s made great strides there,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said before Game 1. “This is an exaggerated example of the way he’s seen it, and he knows what he needs to do — not just for his teammates, but for himself. So a great, fun part of coaching young players is just watching them get better and better, and this is the biggest test. And I’m sure he’ll meet it.”
It didn’t feel like that would be the case in the first half. Edwards committed four turnovers in the first quarter alone, repeatedly trying to weave his way through the Suns’ collapsing defense. Every time he tried to drive, one or two help defenders swarmed the ball and jumped into passing lanes:
The Suns’ early coverage wasn’t perfect, however. As we predicted earlier in the week, Edwards was more aggressive in finding pockets where he could attack in transition and semi-transition, especially in the first quarter.
These first two looks are way, way too open for a walking heat check like Ant:
“I just think they put the ball in his hands and let him dribble up the court,” Kevin Durant reasoned. “A lot of times, Mike Conley is handling the ball, so when you let [Edwards] dribble the ball up the court, he got his rhythm, he was able to hit a few.”
Even so, Edwards only had 10 points on 4-of-8 shooting at halftime. The Suns had done their job on him…but it was the other guys they suddenly had to worry about.
If anything, Game 1 felt like Ant’s entire season condensed into a 48-minute roller coaster: Once he started trusting the pass and got off the ball, his teammates rewarded him with quick-trigger 3s. These are the types of shots that role players like Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Naz Reid missed against Phoenix during the regular season:
But Game 1 served as a good reminder that even though the Wolves were 23rd in the league in 3-point attempts, they were still third in 3-point accuracy. It was the “other guys” like Alexander-Walker (18 points on 7-of-12 shooting) and Reid (12 points on 4-of-10 shooting) who gave Phoenix fits, and as a result, the Suns became a little more hesitant to overcommit when helping on Ant’s drives.
“He’s a great player, you try to do the best you can to slow him down without being exposed on the backside all night,” coach Frank Vogel said. “But there’s things we can do better that we showed throughout the regular season that we didn’t do well enough tonight, and we’ll make those adjustments and be ready for Game 2.”
Chief among those should be sending a second body his way as soon as he enters midrange territory. The Suns limited Ant well enough in the first half, but in that third quarter, he got hot from the midrange and was able to punish defenders one-on-one.
“I think he was just way too comfortable in the third,” Bradley Beal said. “He just got a lot of open looks, was able to get to the basket, and it just kind of opened up Pandora’s Box from there. You can’t let a superstar get going off [2-point] shots. It’s over with from there, then you’re trying to stop a hot man at that point. We have to be better collectively accepting that challenge, ’cause he attacked everybody.”
Make no mistake about it: Most of these are brutally tough, contested shots. But one-on-one coverage against a playoff riser like Ant is asking for trouble, and as Beal mentioned, once he got rolling, it quickly snowballed into an avalanche of pull-up 3s that buried the Suns completely. Not all of them came in the third, but the dagger near the end of that quarter was enough to seal their fate.
Edwards’ pull-up 3s are a shot the Suns have to live with, since he took a whopping 4.6 of them per game during the regular season and only made 33.6 percent of them. But once he was in the zone, those types of kill shots expelled some demons against this Suns team and reset the tone for the entire series:
Ant had 18 of the Wolves’ 31 points in the third quarter, nearly matching Phoenix’s point total (21) by himself.
“He seen a couple tough ones going in, now he got confidence,” Durant explained. “He always got confidence as a player, but when you see a few tough ones going in, I think he hit that fade over me, he was falling away, and then he hit two more 3s over the contest. So it’s a make-or-miss league, you gotta knock down shots if you wanna win.”
Based on that description, Ant really wanted to win, and there was no doubt he relished doing it against his GOAT growing up, Kevin Durant:
All Durant could do was smile, and all Beal could do was throw comical looks his way while Edwards talked his trash.
“Yeah, it’s just basketball,” Durant said. “Not even playoffs, it’s just hoop, you know? You get hot, make shots, make tough shots, you’re gonna feel excited about yourself. So it’s on me to keep coming back and show them a tough look — or whoever’s defending these guys — to show ’em a tough look. If they make shots over us, we move back to the next play.”
Durant is correct, but the defense has to be better in order to warrant that kind of reaction. “On to the next play” works if a guy hits one or two tough shots against high-caliber defense. But if he’s in the zone and demolishing his defender every time down for an entire quarter…the approach needs to change.
When Edwards got going in the midrange and from beyond the arc, the Suns got more frantic with doubles to try and take the ball out of his hands. Ant found more shooters for catch-and-shoot 3s, and it obliterated any dwindling hope Phoenix had of making a late-game push.
Ant’s patient approach paid off, and now the Suns may need to rethink things.
“I think we were doing a good job early of forcing him to turn the ball over,” Devin Booker said. “I think we should just stick with what we were doing in the regular season, and if he makes a few tough shots, don’t panic to where you have to go double him and now the rest of the team’s in rotation.”
The most interesting aspect of this series was whether Anthony Edwards could adjust his approach and get off the ball with all the attention Phoenix was going to send his way — and then if that happened, how the Suns would either stay resolute in their coverage or cave once the “other guys” made them pay for it.
Despite Edwards’ early turnover struggles and quiet first half, Game 1 showed the worst-case scenario of Wolves role players hitting shots and Ant striking the right balance between getting off the ball and attacking himself. It was like watching him charge up for the better part of three quarters until he went into Super Saiyan mode.
Looking ahead to Game 2, the Suns have to remain disciplined with their gap help, do a better job of recovering back out to shooters, eliminate any easy walk-up looks in transition, and above all else, show more help when Ant-Man even sets foot in the midrange. Phoenix was never going to bottle him up entirely, but they can be much better about trying to contain him than they showed on Saturday.
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