Forest fires are usually associated with destruction, burning, and death. Their nature is consumption. But paradoxically, natural wildfires are vital to a healthy forest’s lifecycle. They consume dead trees, clean the forest floor, and create new habitats for future life.
Right now, Anthony Edwards and his youthful friends are setting the NBA aflame. It’s time for new saplings to spring up.
A plutocracy of super-duper-stars has ruled the league for years. LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and Kawhi Leonard were the giant sequoias, overshadowing everything else. At least one of those four was involved in 10 of the last 12 championships, and they stole at least as large a share of the national conversation. Until this season, one or more of the first three alone has been in the second round in every season since 2005. Some of you reading have never experienced a conference semifinals without them — until now.
But the branches are cracking. LeBron is about to turn 40. Curry’s Warriors didn’t make it out of the play-in. Durant was swept in utterly humiliating fashion. Leonard has played in four playoff games in the last three years.
Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic, both 29, have won two of the last three Finals (with Curry’s Warriors nabbing the one in between). We thought they, flanked by Joel Embiid, might be the vanguard for a new age, a glorious rebirth of the big man retrofitted with new-age skills. Perhaps they were. Somehow, though, they already seem to have been passed by.
A new crop of youngsters is here and ready to win now. Aside from Jokic’s struggling Nuggets, every remaining playoff team is led by a player 27 or younger.
Anthony Edwards, just 22 years old, has become the new face of the league (and you’d better believe the NBA’s ravenous marketing machine will chew up everything around it to put Edwards in your grill as much as possible over the coming months). Voguish and fierce, he’s leading a snarling pack of Wolves fueled by one of the most ferocious defenses of modern times.
Edwards has It™: that incandescent luminosity drawing us to him like moths to the flame (but, hopefully, less dangerous. We’ve been burned before; see Morant, Ja). He’s dunking all over expectations and soaring into hearts nationwide, one crotch-chop at a time:
If you find that display distasteful (trust me, it was hilarious live), well, there are plenty of options.