Anthony Edwards Reveals Major Issues Within “Soft as Hell” Timberwolves Locker Room

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Anthony Edwards, Julius Randle : Sacramento Kings at Minnesota Timberwolves
Credit: Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

The Minnesota Timberwolves are down bad, right now. Like, 8-10 bad. Just ask Anthony Edwards. The 23-year-old superstar sat down at his locker, following a fourth-straight Wolves loss. This time, the loss came at the hands of a now 9-10 Sacramento Kings team who used last night’s matchup to end their own four-game losing streak.

But during his postgame scrum, Ant revealed how bad things really are right now, within Timberwolves facilities. And quite honestly, it’s way worse than I would have imagined. Not only is this team playing poorly on the court, but they are not getting along off of it, either.

Soft Minnesota Timberwolves aren’t getting along

Edwards called his team soft. Not on the floor, but with each other, behind the scenes. Apparently, the Wolves locker room is currently full of guys who aren’t getting along, and do not feel like they can communicate openly with one another. Teammates do not feel comfortable holding each other accountable, a necessity to win, at that level.

“We thought defense was our identity, and it’s not looking like that at all. Our identity right now, as me and Mike [Conley] was talking about, I think is we soft as hell… as a team, internally. You know what I mean? Not to the other team, but internally, we soft. We can’t talk to each other. Just a bunch of little kids. Like the whole team. We just can’t talk to each other. We gotta figure it out man, because we can’t go down this road.”

Anthony Edwards on Timberwolves current locker room chemistry

Anthony Edwards is having a career year, from a box score standpoint. His 28.1 points per game are a career high, far exceeding his 23.2 career average. He’s also shooting a career high .571 eFG%, and dropping in three-pointers at an absurd 43% rate. Unfortunately, his team looks the worst it has since the beginning of 2022-23, when the Rudy Gobert experiment first hit the floor.

Time for Tim Connelly to fix the situation

Why is that relevant? Because it’s also the last time there was a major problem with locker room chemistry. Remember what it took for the Gobert trade to work? Another trade. President of basketball operations, Tim Connelly, unloaded D’Angelo Russell, who hated playing with Gobert, and landed Mike Conley, who had a successful run with Rudy in Utah. It was that DLo for Conley swap that changed the trajectory of the Gobert/Edwards/Towns era.

But this is the Gobert/Ant/Randle era, and clearly another locker room shakeup is needed. Ant won’t name names, but in all likelihood, Chris Finch and Tim Connelly know where the chemistry issue stems from. Could it be Julius Randle? Or, is it more like the Gobert/Russell situation, where an established starter is causing problems?

Related: Timberwolves Tumbling Down NBA Power Rankings

As of now, we do not know the answer to that question. But clearly, Anthony Edwards is growing tired of the situation, which means Tim Connelly and Chris Finch need to fix it. This isn’t their team, this is Ant’s team. He’s sick of teammates choosing “me” over “we”, and he’s definitely not okay with being booed at Target Center.

But hopefully, Minnesota Timberwolves insiders and beat writers are asking those types of questions behind the scenes. No matter, we should all have our antennas up for some surprise Wolves news, in the next week or two, especially if their struggles continue on Friday, when they play a Black Friday NBA Cup game vs the Clippers.

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