But winning does matter to him. There is an ultra competitive nature in Edwards that won’t put up with losing for very long. When the Wolves lost to Memphis in the 2022 playoffs and Denver in 2023, those losses stung Edwards hard, even if the Wolves weren’t supposed to win them going into the postseason. When Edwards began working with his current player development coach, Chris Hines, he told Hines he wanted to be the best shooting guard of all-time, which meant he was chasing Michael Jordan — and Edwards knows that means winning titles.
Here’s a hypothetical situation that might have been on the Wolves’ mind as they pondered the long-term vision of the franchise. In two or three years, with older starters like Rudy Gobert and Mike Conley on the team — and Towns still here — the Wolves come to the end of this current iteration of the team without a championship.
Maybe they make another conference finals run, maybe not. But by the time Edwards is 26, the Wolves don’t have a title, and now have to hit the reset button on this version of the franchise. Ownership, whether it’s Glen Taylor, or Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, has invested a lot of luxury tax money in going for it, it’s time to cut some losses and recoup some money.
But there are few ways they can overhaul the roster that make the team better, and so the Wolves go through a period of time when they can’t surround Edwards with the kind of talent needed to be a contender. Maybe they make the playoffs, but they aren’t serious contenders. Or maybe they don’t. By that time in his career, does Edwards begin looking elsewhere that he can win a title?
This trade, from the team’s perspective, assures they have the option to re-shape the roster, since they save money in the short term while offloading Towns’ supermax deal that had at least four years on it.
All indications are Edwards is happy in Minnesota. When Edwards told Vanity Fair in February he thought New York and Los Angeles were “cool” but “they ain’t better than Minnesota,” he excited the fanbase that he would be around as long as he was able to play.