The honors are piling up for Anthony Edwards, the young budding superstar for the Timberwolves. The NBA announced Wednesday that Edwards has been named to the All-NBA Second Team.
This is the first such honor of Edwards’ career and he becomes the sixth player in franchise history to be named to an All-NBA team (Kevin Garnett 8x, Karl-Anthony Towns 2x, Kevin Love 2x, Sam Cassell in 2003-04 and Jimmy Butler in 2017-18).
In his fourth NBA season, Edwards finished the 2023-24 campaign averaging a career-high 25.9 points on a career-best 46.1% shooting, 5.4 rebounds and a career-high 5.1 assists, becoming the first player in franchise history to average 25+ points/5+ rebounds/5+ assists in a single season. His 25.9 points per game are the third-highest points per game average in franchise history.
Most importantly, he lead the Wolves to the three seed in the Western Conference and has them in the Western Conference Finals against Dallas, just the second appearance that deep in the playoffs for the Wolves franchise.
The announcement came just before Game 1 which the Wolves lost 108-105. Edwards said after the game that the team came out mostly flat.
"I don't think we played our best basketball tonight," Edwards said. "One through 15, I think Jaden (McDaniels) was the only one that came ready to play tonight and I think everybody else let him down. So I think if we bring our best brand of basketball to Friday, I think we'll see what type of game it'll be Friday, and we'll see how it goes."
Making an All-NBA team can come with a serious pay raise too. Even though Edwards signed a five-year extension last year, being a second-team All-NBA selection means his $205 million extension becomes a $245 million extension.
It does put the Wolves in a bit of a precarious financial situation however. Karl-Anthony Towns signed a four-year, $224 million supermax extension with the Timberwolves in July 2022 that will kick in during the 2024-25 season. That's in addition to the contract the Wolves inherited with Rudy Gobert's trade. He is on a four-year, $205 million deal giving the team three massive contracts. Jaden McDaniels is also on a five-year deal worth over $130 million.
OTHER ALL NBA SELECTIONS
LeBron James is now the youngest — and the oldest — player to make an All-NBA team. And Dallas’ Luka Doncic and Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are in position to make around $1 million per game a few years from now.
Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander were the only unanimous first-team selections on this season’s All-NBA team, which was revealed by the league on Wednesday night. They were joined on the first team by Doncic, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and Boston’s Jayson Tatum.
On the second team: New York’s Jalen Brunson, Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, Phoenix’s Kevin Durant, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard and James’ Los Angeles Lakers teammate, Anthony Davis.
The third team had James, Golden State’s Stephen Curry, Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis, Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton and Phoenix’s Devin Booker.
The NBA changed the rules starting with this season and All-NBA voting is now positionless — as opposed to having two guards, two forwards and one center on each of the teams, a formula that had been in place since the 1950s. Players also had to appear in a minimum number of games, in most cases, to be eligible for award consideration from the panel of 99 broadcasters and writers who served as the voting panel.
For James, who was the youngest player to make All-NBA when he was voted onto the team for the 2004-05 season, another selection only added to his list of accomplishments.
The 20 All-NBA overall picks extended his record, a total that’s now five more than Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. His 20 consecutive selections is obviously another record, and he’s the first player to be age 39 or older during what became an All-NBA regular season.
Abdul-Jabbar and Duncan were both just a few days from turning 39 when the regular seasons ended in what became their final All-NBA campaigns, Abdul-Jabbar’s being 1985-86 and Duncan’s being 2014-15. James — the NBA’s career scoring leader — played in 71 games this season, the last 42 of those coming after he turned 39.
And for Doncic and Gilgeous-Alexander, the All-NBA nods mean they are poised for supermax extensions that can be signed in 2025, both of which would set records.
Doncic can sign a five-year deal worth about $347 million, starting at nearly $60 million in 2026-27 and ending at about $79 million in 2030-31. Gilgeous-Alexander will be eligible to sign a four-year extension worth about $294 million. His would start in 2027-28 at around $65 million — and the final year, 2030-31, would see him earning just over $81 million, or nearly $1 million per game. It would be the first time an NBA player’s annual salary has topped $80 million.
Also seeing major financial boosts from an All-NBA selection was Haliburton, who, like Edwards, agreed to extensions last summer that were to be worth about $205 million.
Durant made All-NBA for the 11th time, tying for the 12th-most in NBA history.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.