Anthony Edwards has conquered clutch time as his final superstar frontier

Through the first three quarters on Sunday night, Anthony Edwards missed 10 of 16 shots and all four of his 3-pointers. The Wolves trailed the Spurs by as many as 19. Good players have bad nights, but great players are able to flip those bad nights in an instant. Edwards is a great player, and he relishes the responsibility of carrying the late-game load regardless of how things have gone to that point. 

"I don't care what happens in the first three quarters," Edwards said on Sunday. "...I feel like my teammates know, in the last four minutes of the fourth quarter, we giving the ball to [No.] 5." 

Indeed, Edwards got the ball in crunch time on Sunday and knew just what to do with it, hitting four of his five fourth-quarter shots including this sick fadeaway to give Minnesota its first lead of the game with 2:19 to play. 

A couple minutes later, Edwards put Victor Wembanyama into his bag, shook him up, and kissed in what proved to be the game-winner with 24 seconds to play. 

"A few years ago, he probably shoots a step-back 3 over Wemby," Rudy Gobert said of Edwards' game-winner. "He can make [the step-back], but it's not a super high percentage shot. Tonight, he was patient and poised."

For a guy who can make any shot on the floor, deciding which one to take, and when to take it, can be a surprisingly difficult task. There's no wrong choice, necessarily. But there are better choices. This season, Edwards is making the better choices -- and when a player who possesses all the shot-making ability the basketball gods could possibly put into one body starts actually taking the right shots, results are going to follow. 

Following Sunday's performance, Edwards is shooting a remarkable 70.7% (57% from 3) of his shots in the "clutch" -- defined as any possession inside the final five minutes when the score is within five points. Nobody else who has taken at least 15 clutch shots is even close to those marks, and they are a huge jump from Ant's 37.5/29.9 combined clutch shooting splits over the previous three seasons. 

"I think [earlier in his career], his decision-making at the end of games was a little too much hero ball, to be honest," Gobert said. "I feel like he [now] values the ball more. He understands these possessions are really important."

This started on opening night. The Wolves, who are 11-7 in clutch games so far after going 20-25 last year, were trailing Portland with just over a minute to play when Ant dropped Jerami Grant on a step-back 3. 

On Christmas, the Wolves trailed the Nuggets by 15 halfway through the fourth quarter only for Edwards to score 11 points over the final five minutes including this fadeaway corner 3 to send the game to overtime. 

How about down two with inside a minute to play against the defending champs?

These are the types of shots that Inpredictable tracks as part of its Clutch Win Probability Added metric, in which Edwards ranks seventh league-wide and No. 1 overall based solely on made and missed field goals. By Inpredictable's count, Edwards has attempted 41 shots this season that have had an "elevated impact on win probability," and on those shots he has posted a staggering 75.6 eFG%. 

You don't chart that kind of number just taking the highlight shots you just watched. To Gobert's earlier point, Edwards is recognizing how, and by whom, he's being guarded in crunch time, and when given a choice between contested jumpers and attacking -- as he did on Wemby -- when he has the advantage, he's more open to the latter. 

Here he is tying the game in the closing seconds against New Orleans:

And here again with the Wolves down two in the final minute of overtime on Christmas:

Only seven players have scored more clutch points in the paint than Edwards' 31 this season, and all of them have played in more clutch games. That's a testament to an all-around attack on the most pivotal possessions, when, as we've all seen far too many times, it is so easy even for the most gifted scorers to concede their inherent creative advantages and fire up 20-footers by default. 

Edwards doesn't play that game anymore. He plays his game. And he doesn't deviate in the clutch. If the jumper is the shot, he takes it. If the lane is open or he has the mismatch, he attacks it. It has been said of clutch hitters in baseball that they don't necessarily get better when the stakes are highest, they just don't get worse. In other words, they stay the same player regardless of circumstance. 

That's Edwards in now his sixth NBA season. He's had all the talent in the world from Day 1, but every year he has sharpened. He went from an inefficient shooter to leading league with 320 made 3-pointers a season ago at almost 40%. This year he's at 41% from deep with a career-high 62.6 true-shooting clip. If you double him now, he understands the power of getting off the ball and letting someone else tally both the bucket and the assist. 

Beyond the scoring and highlight dunks, these are all required steps in the pursuit of true superstardom. The one frontier Edwards had left to conquer was the clutch, and this season, at least so far, he's doing that.