Tuesday night marks the first game of what should be a tremendous series between the Golden State Warriors and the Minnesota Timberwolves.
After taking the Lakers down in five and reversing the meme, Anthony Edwards and the T’Wolves return to the Target Center for a battle with the team that reportedly sparked the three-time All-Star’s work ethic.
During pre-draft workouts, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr kept stopping Ant and asking him for more effort. And at a dinner following the drills, the nine-time NBA champ admitted that he wouldn’t take the former Georgia Bulldog if his team held that year’s No. 1 pick.
“We went to dinner that night and they still was continuously telling me like, ‘You didn’t work hard enough,'” Edwards recalled. “‘If we had the No. 1 pick, we wouldn’t take you.’ And I was just like, ‘Damn, that’s crazy.'”
“I want to play the Warriors. I want to get to the Warriors. Wherever they at, I want to get to them,” Ant admitted in an interview two years ago.
Now he’s got them and ESPN’s Matchup Predictor appears to see things going in his favor in Game 1.
Per ESPN Analytics, Minnesota has a slight edge over Golden State in the series opener with a 51.9% chance of taking a 1-0 lead over the Dubs in the Western Conference Semifinals to the Warriors’ 48.1%.
The Timberwolves are also 6.5-point favorites over Steph Curry and Co., according to ESPNBET. But head coach Chris Finch isn’t letting that get into his team’s head prior to tip-off.
“They played their best basketball down the stretch and into the playoffs. They’re coming off of a really, really tough series, no doubt about it, but they showed what they’re made of in that series,” Chris Finch told the network.
“They got us three times out of four this year, but we haven’t played them with the new-look roster,” he added. “A lot of things to contemplate coming into this series. It’s definitely going to be a tough one for us.”
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