LOS ANGELES — When Anthony Edwards tossed the ball into the stands as he walked off the court following his ejection on Thursday night, an uncomfortable truth hung in the air.
One of the NBA’s most exciting young stars, a player oozing with so much charisma that he regularly is mentioned as someone capable of taking the torch from LeBron James and Steph Curry, has entered a dangerous zone when it comes to interactions with league officials.
His name is becoming synonymous with the likes of Rasheed Wallace, DeMarcus Cousins and Draymond Green, all wonderfully talented players whose reputations were marred by volatile interactions with officials and antics that drew the wrong kind of attention to themselves and their teams.
Edwards picked up two technical fouls in the Minnesota Timberwolves’ 111-102 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, his 15th and 16th of the season. If the league does not rescind one of them, he will be suspended for Friday night’s game in Utah. When he tossed the ball into the stands — a major no-no in the eyes of the league — he also set himself up for yet another fine in a season that has already cost him $285,000 for five separate infractions.
Anthony Edwards picked up his 16th technical foul of the season vs. the Lakers.
He was ejected from the game and will be suspended for the Wolves’ next game. pic.twitter.com/VNp842z0G2
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) February 28, 2025
It is not even March yet, and Edwards has already picked up enough technical fouls to warrant a suspension. He might be only 23 years old, but he has been in the NBA for nearly five full seasons now. He is much more good-natured than Wallace or Cousins were in their day. He is not as in-your-face as Green has been with officials. But he is drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself, like those players once did, piling up the penalties and hurting the Timberwolves’ chances of winning in the process.
“He’s got to be better,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said. “He’s had too many outbursts. I think a lot of them are deserved. They’re going to miss some calls from time to time for sure.”
On a night when most of his teammates struggled to shoot and rebound, Edwards scored 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting and grabbed six boards in 26 minutes. Having their best player miss the final 17 1/2 minutes of a game that was tight down the stretch could have cost them a win.
Edwards will be suspended an additional game for every two technical fouls he receives going forward for the rest of the season. Considering he has picked up four technical fouls in the first four games following the All-Star break, it does not bode well for the 24 games that remain on the Wolves’ schedule after Utah.
Edwards picked up his first technical foul at the end of the first quarter in a confrontation with former teammate Jarred Vanderbilt. The two exchanged words, and Edwards shoved Vanderbilt in the back. Vanderbilt responded with a shove, and both players were issued technicals.
The second one came a little over midway through the third quarter. Edwards drove to the basket against Gabe Vincent and went down to the ground, looked at official Brent Barnaky and argued for a foul call. Barnaky gave him the technical while he was still on the ground, triggering an automatic ejection.
At first glance, it was difficult to see a foul from Vincent and a reason for a gripe from Edwards. But replays showed Vincent kicking Edwards in the leg, which caused him to fall. Edwards initiated contact before the kick, but crew chief James Williams said that he was given the technical foul for “directing profanity toward the game official.”
“Some nights it’s just not going to go your way,” said Donte DiVincenzo, who had nine points, six assists and was a plus-15 in 23 minutes in his return from a 19-game absence because of a toe injury. “The mental discipline, we know. We talked about it. We have to get better at it as a unit. Those guys have to know that a game like that, that can’t happen.”
The exchange between Edwards and Barnaky seemed tame by Edwards’ standards, but his teammates said that he should have better understood the temperature in the room. Players in both locker rooms said Barnaky was on edge from the first quarter on and issued warnings early in the game about complaining over calls. So when Edwards did curse at Barnaky in the third quarter, players were not surprised that he was thrown out.
“We’ve got a lot of guys who get emotional when things don’t go the right way, individually. And that can hurt our team as a whole,” Minnesota point guard Mike Conley said. “We have to be better. Ant has to be better. He knows that.”
Edwards left the arena without speaking to the media, but Conley said Edwards apologized to the team after a game that came right down to the wire. The Wolves trailed by as many as 23 points after another terrible start.
Once Edwards went to the locker room, they mounted a charge similar to the comeback in Oklahoma City on Monday night. They cut the deficit to three points with 5 minutes, 29 seconds to play, but could not keep the Lakers off of the free-throw line down the stretch.
The Lakers shot 46 free throws in the game, 20 more than the Timberwolves and the most for a Wolves opponent since Houston shot 47 in 2010. Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves each shot 12 free throws, and LeBron James added 10 attempts to go with his 33 points, 17 rebounds and six assists.
Twenty-three of the Lakers’ free throws came in the fourth quarter, negating some truly awful shooting from Los Angeles. The Lakers were 5 of 20 from the field and 1 of 8 from 3-point range in the final period.
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Naz Reid, Jaden McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker combined to miss their first 14 3s for Minnesota. Reid scored just three points in the game on 1-of-10 shooting, McDaniels was 6 of 18 and wunderkind defender Jaylen Clark was in foul trouble all night. The Wolves shot 29.3 percent from 3 as a team and were outrebounded 52-41, another game where they missed Rudy Gobert (back) and Julius Randle (groin).
Terrence Shannon Jr. had another strong game off the bench, scoring 25 points and grabbing five rebounds in 29 minutes.
“I didn’t particularly care for a lot of our shots tonight overall. … We didn’t want to work hard enough for our shots,” Finch said. “We needed some more movement.”
It’s not just Edwards complaining for the Wolves. Reid is constantly protesting calls that go against him. Finch is always in the officials’ ears. McDaniels isn’t bashful about his disagreements, either.
After the win over the Thunder on Monday, Finch talked about how frustrating it is to play against Oklahoma City because “they foul all the time. And then you can’t really touch Shai (Gilgeous-Alexander).” Then he appeared on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” on FS1 and acknowledged that he drew a technical earlier this season for calling referee C.J. Washington “a bozo.”
Reid also picked up a technical foul in the fourth quarter, this one with the Wolves down just four points. Once again, the interaction between Reid and Barnaky did not appear on its face to be overly confrontational. But the Wolves have built a reputation in the league as one of the more vocal complainers to officials.
Edwards often has a case. He does not flop, does not embellish and does not deploy any of the low-rent tactics that several other high scorers do to trick referees in getting to the foul line. He plays an honest game. Some metrics will tell you that he gets more whistles than one would believe, given the volume of complaining he does game-in and game-out.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported on Monday morning that Second Spectrum data shows that of the 36 players in the NBA who have at least 500 drives to the basket, only Giannis Antetokounmpo (.252) has a higher free-throw rate than Edwards’ .224. Edwards is averaging 9.0 free-throw attempts per game since Jan. 1.
He does initiate a lot of contact on those drives. Some calls are not made, but Edwards complains as if he never gets any calls. When he is voicing his displeasure, he is often slow to get back on defense, which often leads to giving up points on the other end.
Edwards has expressed frustration in the past with the lack of calls that come his way in comparison to the whistles that Gilgeous-Alexander gets.
“It’s basketball. It’s emotion, there’s passion, there’s love for the game,” Alexander-Walker said. “In Ant’s case, if you feel like it was a blatant foul that was missed, there is frustration. He’s competing to win. … Now for us, it’s how do we navigate the uncontrollables and remember it’s out of our hands.”
This is the world the Wolves live in right now. Major reform to the officiating profession might be needed, but improvement is not coming this season. Some calls were missed against the Lakers. Dončić did his fair share of arguing as well but did not receive a technical foul.
In the meantime, the Wolves (32-28) have to find a way to deal with the situation. They are 1-3 since the All-Star break to slip into eighth place in the Western Conference playoff race, a game behind the sixth-seeded LA Clippers. The schedule lightens up considerably the rest of the way. They do not have time for petty grievances with officials at the moment. They do not have time to be playing without their best player.
“A lot of teams are fighting right now. They are fighting for position and fighting for playoff spots,” Conley said. “And we can’t let small things in the way of what we’re trying to do.”
(Photo: Harry How / Getty Images)
