Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns are why the Timberwolves find themselves two wins from their first conference semifinals appearance in almost 20 years. They spent 1,886 minutes together this season, more than all but nine duos in the entire league. This makes sense. Towns and Edwards are already one of the most dynamic and complementary tandems in basketball; Minnesota averaged an impressive 115.7 points per 100 possessions—only the Jazz had a higher offensive rating—when both were on the court.
At their best, Towns and Edwards are brutal and sleek, able to combine technical skill with restless energy. It’s never more evident than when they form what may already be the world’s most auspicious pick-and-roll. On paper, it’s an overwhelming wallop with very few, if any, answers.
Try to guard them two-on-two by dropping the big and Edwards will either rise up for a jump shot or pummel a backpedaling big man. His speed and power are extraordinary. Merged with balance, footwork and touch, there isn’t much that can be done when Edwards sees a path to the basket. Towns has waited his entire career for a copilot exactly like him. “He’s a special, special, special, special, special player. I’m very, very fortunate to play with him,” Towns said. “I’ll even go as far as saying he’s the most talented player I’ve ever played with.”
If the defense gets tired of being at his mercy and squeezes the ball, Edwards can toss it over to Towns, either rolling into the paint or popping behind the arc—where he can drive a closeout or take an open three. (Towns made 39.7% of his spot-up threes this season, while Edwards drilled 43.2% of them after the All-Star break.)
Send a third man over and, if Minnesota’s spacing is right, Towns will pick them apart, especially when in the middle of the floor. “You got two of the most elite scorers in the NBA in one pick-and-roll,” he said. “So it gets really difficult to choose your poison.”
A few teams (the Grizzlies being one) can switch, double, rotate and feel pretty good about forcing stagnant basketball via an ostensible mismatch, but a vast majority don’t have the right personnel. Whether it’s Towns on a smaller wing or Edwards on a slower big, it’s hard not to overhelp. Hedge, recover and keep both at bay? Sometimes that still won’t work if either one is isolated one-on-one with room to operate (especially when the whistle is tight).
“Ant can score at all three levels so as a defending big, if you’re not up on the screen he’s raising up and hitting that three at a consistent rate,” Grizzlies forward Xavier Tillman said. “And then KAT can both roll and pop so if you’re lackadaisical with your communication and two guys are helping on ball, he pops wide open for a three. Those guys are definitely deadly together, and to guard them you just gotta communicate.”
But in a physical series against one of the most athletic, versatile and connected defenses in the league, Minnesota all but abandoned the Ant/KAT pick-and-roll when the Grizzlies went small by removing Steven Adams from their starting lineup after Game 1.
(Quick aside: Not enough has been made of how, as the best player on a seven seed, Towns has already forced a team with this season’s second-highest winning percentage to cycle through three different starting lineups. The Grizzlies’ original starting five was +24.9 in 109 minutes coming into this series. Towns instantly made it unplayable.)
Throughout the regular season, Edwards and Towns linked up regularly. Not quite at the same volume as Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton or Trae Young and Clint Capela, but their pick-and-rolls were still frequent, especially considering Edwards isn’t a point guard and would often share the floor with other ballhandlers like D’Angelo Russell and Pat Beverley. In Game 2, though, Edwards and Towns ran only five pick-and-rolls. In Game 3? Four.
“They’re just switching a lot of things right now,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch told Sports Illustrated before Game 4. “So in that pick-and-roll situation, like, KAT has to roll more to create the distortion and open up the driving line so we can attack the big. Also draw a crowd if he has a mismatch down there. Like, right now we spend a lot of time just kind of popping and ending up in what I call ‘shell offense,’ just five guys on the perimeter.”
Here’s what that looks like:
But in Game 4—after two games in which their offense generated an incredulous 95.5 points per 100 possessions—Edwards and Towns were back to leveraging an action that should always be a staple of their offense. On the play below, with Russell spaced out on the opposite wing, Edwards drove middle as Towns dived into the paint. It forced Ja Morant to help all the way at the elbow. When he closed back out on Russell, Morant bit on a shot fake, putting Memphis in a dangerous rotation.
They did the same exact thing a few minutes later, but this time Brandon Clarke hedged the screen before recovering back to Towns with Ziaire Williams on Russell instead of Morant. Again, Williams’s help was at the elbow. Again, Edwards kicked to Russell, caught a Grizzly in the air with his shot fake and put the Grizzlies in rotation.
“I feel the pick-and-roll was something that we have been lacking in our flow, and I think that when we get to that, it’s extremely difficult to guard both of us. And if you ever find a way to do it, it requires three people to guard us, which allows one person to be wide open,” Towns said after Game 4. “And that leads to JMac hitting threes, Pat hitting threes, DLo, you can go down the list of all it’s created just by the attention we’re drawing.”
Their pick-and-rolls were a point of emphasis early in the clock, allowing, on the play below, Towns to roll into a post-up on Desmond Bane that eventually drew a foul.
It’s an action that can be run again and again, early in possessions to shift a defense and make them work. For an offense that likes to churn through randomness, it can simplify and settle Minnesota, toggling between a fail-safe and a bedrock. They’re less potent, regardless of who they’re up against, when it’s not in the playbook.
In general, the playoffs are a platform as much as anything else. Right now Edwards and Towns are using it to showcase a two-man game that may, someday fairly soon, yield basketball’s most melodious action. As they continue to build chemistry in high leverage, meaningful moments over the rest of this series and beyond—in future units that have even more spacing than their three-point-heavy approach already manages—it’s hard to think of too many options most opponents will have to slow them down.
In the meantime, Timberwolves forward Jaden McDaniels sums it up best: “I feel like something’s gonna happen good for us with them two in the pick-and-roll.”
