Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards is an emotional player. The NBA playoffs by their very nature are an emotional event.
You can guess where this story is going.
On Saturday, Edwards powered his way to the hoop to put the Timberwolves up 73–68 on the Denver Nuggets with 1:15 left in the third quarter of Game 1 of the teams' Western Conference semifinal series. Enthused, Edwards turned around to talk trash—and was immediately hit with a technical foul.
Color commentators Jamal Crawford and Reggie Miller immediately rose to Edwards' defense on the TNT broadcast of the game.
"No, Courtney (Kirkland)! I'm sorry!" Miller exclaimed. "We're in the second round of the playoffs. Emotions are always gonna be high."
"That's awful. You can't celebrate someone for being a dog and then we call a technical on a staredown," Crawford concurred.
Later, Miller took issue with the perceived hypocrisy of issuing Edwards a technical but not Nuggets guard Jamal Murray for a finger-gun celebration.
"You see what my problem is with that? Why isn’t that a taunting technical foul if you called a staredown?" Miller asked. "Why isn’t that a technical foul on Jamal Murray?"
