Anthony Edwards Scored 47 on a Knee That Needed Surgery. Minnesota Has Not Announced a Thing.
Anthony Edwards scored 47 points in Cleveland on Monday night. On Tuesday, ESPN reported he needs an arthroscopic procedure on his right knee and will be out roughly two months.
Both of those things are true at the same time, and that is the uncomfortable part.
What Was Reported, and What the Team Said
Shams Charania reported Tuesday evening that Edwards will undergo an arthroscopic procedure on his right knee and could miss up to two months. Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic put the target return in December. Two months of NBA basketball is about 25 games, which carries Minnesota to roughly its Christmas Day meeting with Oklahoma City.
The Timberwolves have announced none of it. Their only official word Tuesday was an injury report listing Edwards as questionable with right knee injury maintenance. The Associated Press source who confirmed the procedure spoke anonymously because the team had not yet made it public.
Nobody has reported what is actually wrong, either. An arthroscopic procedure on the right knee is the whole of it. No structure has been named and no diagnosis has been issued. Reports also differ on whether the surgery has already happened.
33.3 Points a Game on a Knee That Needed Surgery
Edwards opened the season with 45 at Miami, 15 at Orlando, 26 against Toronto and 47 in a 127-125 overtime loss at Cleveland. That is 33.3 per game through four, the best stretch of his career, produced on a knee a surgeon is about to go into.
The Toronto game reads differently now. Krawczynski wrote that Edwards “played under 28 minutes but was clutching at his right knee several times in the game.” The next night he was cleared to play in Cleveland only after pregame warmups, then put up 47.
The Quote That Lasted About 24 Hours
Before that Cleveland game, head coach Chris Finch described the knee to Joe Vardon of The Athletic as “a daily situation, I don’t think there’s any long term concern.”
That was Monday. The surgery report landed Tuesday.
Finch was repeating the organization’s honest position as of Monday afternoon. That is exactly why Tuesday stings.
Minnesota Already Chose Rest Once
This knee is not new. Edwards missed six games in March with right knee soreness and inflammation, then sat 11 of Minnesota’s final 14 regular season games. He entered the Denver playoff series listed with right knee injury maintenance, and hyperextended his other knee in Game 4 of that series. He played 61 games last season after never playing fewer than 72 in his first five.
Minnesota went into the offseason and chose not to operate. Rest and rehab instead. Five months later they are operating in October rather than July, and the cost is games that count.
The 65-Game Problem
A 25-game absence puts Edwards on the wrong side of the NBA’s 65-game threshold for All-NBA and MVP eligibility unless he returns on schedule and stays healthy the rest of the way. For a 25-year-old on a five-year extension worth $244.6 million, that is not a trophy-case footnote. It is the difference between a decade of hardware and a decade of almost.
The Guard Rotation Was Already Thin
Donte DiVincenzo is out recovering from a right Achilles tendon repair. Take Edwards out of a backcourt that was already down a rotation guard and Minnesota is asking LaMelo Ball, in his first season with the franchise, to carry the perimeter with Ayo Dosunmu, Bones Hyland and Terrence Shannon Jr. behind him.
The Wolves are 3-1 and sixth in the West. They will stay afloat. Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels are good enough defensively to keep most nights close.
But Minnesota spent an offseason reshaping this roster around a franchise guard who is now going to miss a quarter of the season, and spent that same offseason deciding his knee did not need a procedure. The procedure is happening anyway. The only thing that changed is the calendar.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
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