Anybody who has ever played basketball has dreamed of having the ball in their hands with the clock ticking down in a winner-take-all game. Few players have ever actually gotten to live out that dream, and fewer still have been able to come through by making the shot. Kyrie Irving is one of them from when he hit one of the biggest shots in NBA history to beat the 73-9 Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals.
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Many people have used that Finals as the number one reason for putting LeBron James at the top of the GOAT conversation, and though LeBron deserves all his flowers for helping the Cavs prevail in that series, he couldn’t have done it without Kyrie, especially in game seven.
Kyrie is known for being a bit different, a bit more zen, from most other NBA players. The way he calmly reacted to hitting a dagger 3 to beat the seemingly unbeatable Warriors says it all. Anthony Edwards, who’s now one of the faces of the league for his high-flying game and fun-loving, brash nature, revealed recently that he would have reacted slightly differently if he was the one to hit a shot that huge.
“That’s all I can think about right now, me hitting a shot like that in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Kyrie was calm about it, if I hit some s*** like that, you know what I’m doing. What?! Don’t let the buzzer beat, I might pull my pants down on their ass.”
We hope this isn’t what the Ant-Man meant when he told Charles Barkley to “Bring yo ass” to Minnesota after his Timberwolves beat the Nuggets to get to the Western Conference Finals last year, but with someone this extroverted, we wouldn’t put it past him.
Kyrie was in his fifth season when he knocked down that crucial shot, and Edwards is in his fifth year now. His Wolves are currently in a gigantic logjam for spots 4-8 in the West, as they’re tied with four other teams with 32 losses and just a few games to play in the regular season.
Edwards’ ascent into becoming one of the best players in the NBA means that he may get the chance to live out his dream sooner rather than later. He nearly did last year, as he helped the Wolves beat the defending champion Nuggets in a road Game 7 before falling in the Western Conference Finals to the Mavericks.
Anthony Edwards said he might pull his pants down if he were to hit a Game 7 game-winner like Kyrie did
( @Underdog / h/t @LeagueAlerts) pic.twitter.com/ZuevwoxFab
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) April 8, 2025
Edwards helped lead the Wolves to another win over the Nuggets last week, this time in a 140-139 double overtime epic. He scored 34 in that game and and went especially wild in the fourth quarter and overtime, but it was Nickeil Alexander-Walker who played the hero by hitting two free throws with .1 left to overcome a 61-point effort by Nikola Jokic and get the win.
After the game, Edwards insisted on bringing NAW over to share the spotlight, giving him credit for coming through in the clutch again and again.
Can Anthony Edwards get the Wolves to their first-ever NBA Finals?
The Wolves have surged in the second half of the season, overcoming a slow start as they got used to being without Karl Anthony-Towns and integrated new arrivals Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo. The Thunder have lorded over the West all season, but recent back-to-back losses to the Rockets and Lakers have made it clear that the race to represent the West in the Finals is wide open.
Edwards and the Wolves are very much in that mix, especially if they can do enough in their final four games to avoid the play-in.
Whether it’s this year or sometime soon, Edwards is too good not to get the Wolves to the Finals at some point, and when he does, NBA fans around the world better prepare themselves for a kind of celebration they haven’t seen before.
