How rising NBA star Anthony Edwards has quickly become a historic playoff performer

The Astonishing Ant-Man: The 2024 NBA Playoffs

Now let's discuss the 2024 NBA playoffs, which are still going on. Right now, the No. 3 seed Minnesota Timberwolves are in the second round playing the No. 2 seed Denver Nuggets after beating the No. 6 seed Phoenix Suns in the first round.

Once again, Anthony Edwards has been playing out of his mind, averaging around 32 points, seven rebounds, and six assists per game on 65.6% true shooting across six games. To be completely honest, Edward’s performance in this year’s playoffs hasn’t been too different from his last playoff run, because he hasn’t made any significant improvements to his game and he still has the same playsyle. However, there are a few things worth mentioning.

For starters, his scoring efficiency has been insane. He is still the same aggressive shot creator he’s always been, yet his true shooting percentage is about 8% higher than it was in the regular season and this is largely because of his red-hot three-point shooting.

Through six games, he is shooting 41.9% from behind the arc on just over seven attempts per game, which is nuts. Unfortunately, this is probably not sustainable, but we already know that Edwards doesn’t need to shoot all that well from three to be effective because he did this just last postseason. If he can continue shooting at this level, though, he might be the best-performing player in this year’s playoffs.

On top of being a game-changing scorer, Edwards has also been a solid playmaker, sporting an assist rate of 24.6%. His turnover rate has been a bit higher than it was in last year’s playoffs, largely due to some poor decisions and loose ball handling at times, but his production as a playmaker has still been very solid. He’s been a productive defender as well and his activity on this end of the floor shows up in the box score just like in previous playoff series.