{"id":164832,"date":"2025-09-23T22:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T22:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/164832\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T22:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T22:42:07","slug":"thunder-inadvertently-forced-anthony-edwards-to-try-and-mimic-kobe-jordan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/164832\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunder inadvertently forced Anthony Edwards to try and mimic Kobe, Jordan"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania revealed on Tuesday’s edition of NBA Today that Anthony Edwards has been hard at work developing a post-up and mid-range game<\/a> akin to the likes of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Without question, the OKC Thunder have played a significant role in the All-Star’s drive to mimic such legends.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, it was revealed<\/a> that Edwards has been “off of the social media grid and working on his game” ever since he and the Timberwolves were ousted in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals by Oklahoma City this past May.<\/p>\n

Over the four months since being eliminated from the 2025 postseason, the 24-year-old has “been watching a lot of tape of Kobe and MJ, studying their game and how they were able to get their shot off from the post-up game,” according to sources close to Charania.<\/p>\n

Loss to Thunder played major role in Anthony Edwards offseason drive<\/p>\n

Motivation to improve upon his skills following a playoff series loss is certainly nothing new for the 24-year-old.<\/p>\n

As Charania noted during his appearance, following Minnesota’s loss to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2024 Western Conference Finals, he spent that offseason focusing heavily on improving his offensive game from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n

The hard work he put in would end up paying off in quite an impressive way, as he raised his three-point percentage from 35.7 in 2023-24 to a career-best 39.5 in 2024-25 while leading the league in total three-pointers made on the season with 320.<\/p>\n

This uptick in perimeter shooting would follow him into the playoffs, where he would rank fifth in long-range makes with 46, two shy of the fourth-placed Lu Dort.<\/p>\n

Now, in the wake of his loss to the Thunder, Edwards has looked to adopt a post-up presence in the low-to-mid range, and, according to Charania, this part of his game could realistically become a “go-to element” of his bag of tricks that he and T-Wolves coach, Chris Finch, will look to lean on.<\/p>\n

Before honing in on this specific area of play, the former number one pick was already undeniably seen as one of the best players the NBA had to offer.<\/p>\n

From his three All-Star and two All-NBA nods to being fresh off a career-best campaign where he averaged 27.6 points, 5.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1.2 steals per game, debates over who between him and Gilgeous-Alexander should be seen as the face of the association<\/a> have regularly been held among fans and pundits alike.<\/p>\n

It appears the loss to his adversary last postseason has pushed him to try to unlock a new area of his game that, if successful, could make the aforementioned debate a bit more challenging to find an answer to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN NBA insider Shams Charania revealed on Tuesday’s edition of NBA Today that Anthony Edwards has been hard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-164832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}