The Minnesota Timberwolves had just beaten the Portland Trail Blazers, their second win in three games since the All-Star break, so Karl-Anthony Towns was in a particularly good mood. Winning stretches like this haven't come around that often the past few years.
Better yet, Minnesota had won because its No. 1 overall pick, Anthony Edwards, had the best game of his young career, scoring 13 of his then-career-high 34 points in the fourth quarter of a tight game against one of the best teams in the Western Conference.
Towns had already tried and failed to win with another former No. 1 overall pick, Andrew Wiggins, during their four-plus years together in Minnesota. And while he's just 25 years old, Towns has seen enough in his six NBA seasons to know you don't get many chances to make these kind of pairings work.
On the night of March 14, that meant sending a message.
"Let me just say," Towns began, "everyone's trying to find a way to show how they're better than Anthony Edwards, because he was taken No. 1. ... That was the right decision for us in this organization -- I want to make that very clear."
All he'd been asked was to describe what it's like being the No. 1 pick. There was no subtext to it, nothing leading Towns to comment on whether Minnesota had done the right thing by taking Edwards over Charlotte Hornets point guard LaMelo Ball, who'd been drafted No. 3 overall and had been the league's best and most intriguing rookie to that point.
"I just know how it is when you're the No. 1. pick -- if any other rookies do well, they're like, well, there's a threat to the throne," Towns said.
"I know what all those pressures are like. Everyone's saying that, even here, fans of our own, they murmur and stuff."
Towns knows what those pressures are, because in his six seasons Minnesota has cast and recast different lottery picks in the co-star role next to him -- Wiggins, Zach LaVine, Kris Dunn, Jarrett Culver, and now D'Angelo Russell and Edwards -- trying to find the right fit. (And that's not even mentioning the failed Jimmy Butler experiment.)
Which makes the final 13 games of this season, with Russell recently back from knee surgery, Edwards and fellow rookie Jaden McDaniels blossoming, and Towns playing his best basketball in years -- over his past 20 games, Towns is averaging 27.4 points, 11.3 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game, and he is shooting 42.4% from 3 -- so important in determining the course Minnesota will take going forward.
The Wolves only keep their first-round pick if it falls in the top three, otherwise it conveys to the Golden State Warriors (as part of the trade for Russell). Which means Minnesota could have to revisit the decision it made this fall, when it picked Edwards over Ball and James Wiseman.
Timberwolves president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas is adamant that Edwards will eventually become the best player among that group.
"People are so worried about who's going to perform better in the first month or first half of the season," Rosas says. "But we've got the guy that's going to be the best player when this is all said and done."
Still, he admits, it was nice to hear his franchise player publicly affirm that decision.
"For me, Anthony Edwards is special," Towns says. "He's the most special player in that draft. That's what we believe. And that's what I believe wholeheartedly. And I'm going to defend him and his name as long as I can."
It wasn't long before Towns' comments reached Edwards, who rejected the premise altogether and suggested that anyone who questioned whether he deserved to be the No. 1 pick could "go kick rocks."
"Yeah, that's Ant," Rosas says. "He's got a little swagger to him. He's not running from anything. And we needed that type of personality."
Before picking Edwards No.1 overall this fall, Rosas had a three-hour dinner meeting with him to really get a sense of his personality. He had already liked Edwards' size, athleticism and skill set. But Rosas says the deciding factor in picking Edwards was his grit.
"There's no perfect player," Rosas says. "You just want to know what type of person they are. He owned his mistakes. He had a good sense of what he knew and what he didn't know."
Edwards' mother and grandmother both died of cancer when he was a teenager, and he rarely opens up about the effect that's had on him. But he told Rosas something he'll never forget.
"He said, 'I've been through the worst thing I can in my life. But you'll always see me smiling. You'll always see me excited about life, because I have the opportunity to do things that nobody else will be able to do,'" Rosas recalls.
So who cares about NBA Rookie of the Year? Or what LaMelo is doing? Or if people are second-guessing Minnesota's pick?
All that matters to Edwards and the Timberwolves is developing into the kind of player who helps Minnesota build a winner -- it has made the playoffs just once in 16 years -- and Edwards knows he isn't there yet.
"The first half of the season was like taking the SAT test with no preparation, no nothing," Edwards says. "I was all right. But in the second half of my season, I'm prepared for my SAT test."
Indeed, that game against Portland was the beginning of what's been a promising second half for Edwards.
He was named the Western Conference Rookie of the Month for March after averaging 24.2 points, 5.5 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.6 steals over a 13-game stretch.
And it coincides not just with Towns' public affirmation of his talents, but the growing on-court bond between the two former No. 1 overall picks.
Prior to All-Star Weekend, Towns threw 3.8 passes per game to Edwards that led to shots, per Second Spectrum, ranking 84th among more than 850 NBA duos to play at least 350 minutes together. But since the break, that's up to 5.4 per game, good for 19th.
In other words, Towns is doing a lot to set up his 19-year-old wing.
"I can make it easier for him to score and put him in better spots," Towns says. "I understand his game. I got to be out there to do that, though."
Which is why he was so disappointed to miss time with a wrist injury and a bout of COVID-19 this winter.
"Of all the things that could've happened to me this year, one of the things I just didn't want to do was be hurt with Ant playing. I wanted to be out there, teaching him and helping him succeed."
When Towns returned to the lineup on Feb. 10, the Wolves were just 6-18. Less than two weeks later, after a loss to the New York Knicks that dropped them to 7-24, Rosas fired head coach Ryan Saunders and installed former Toronto Raptors assistant Chris Finch.
Minnesota was in the middle of a road trip, meaning Finch had to meet his new team in Milwaukee, then coach the next night.
"The team was emotionally not probably in the best place" Finch says. "You had to feel the room coming into it."
So he decided to hang back and use the five games remaining before the All-Star break to observe and evaluate.
"What can we affect now?" Finch says. "And what do we have to leave 'til later?"
He knew he wanted to play through Towns as much as possible. He'd worked with Denver center Nikola Jokic earlier in his career and saw the same kind of basketball IQ and passing ability in Towns. The key to bringing that out, he says, was simplifying things for everyone else.
"One of my priorities was just to get the ball into his hands as early and as often as possible," Finch says of Towns. "When we were in Denver, at times I think we didn't give Joker the ball enough, mainly in the post, so I didn't want to make that mistake again."
With Edwards, Finch preached efficiency.
"I kept it simple: 'Let's do more of the things you're really good at, like getting downhill and finishing,'" Finch says. "He's actually a good 3-point shooter when he just catches and shoots. He's a willing passer and he's a good creator for his teammates when he gets to the paint. Sometimes he over-surveys the scene. So I'm trying to get him to be more attack-minded and trust his talent when he gets to the paint.
The difference has been striking: In 36 games before the All-Star break, Edwards took nearly 15 shots a game but shot just 37% from the field and got to the free throw line merely 2.4 times a game. In 23 games since the All Star break, he has taken 19.3 shots per game and has hit 43.6% of them, and he has more than doubled his free throw attempts (5.1).
"One of my stock lines is," Finch says. "'You're already wearing an Armani suit. I just want to tailor it.'"
Finch spent his first few weeks with the team building relationships and talking basketball -- trying not to immediately force his ways onto a franchise in turmoil.
"Early on I really just talked to them both as people and what my vision was for them basketball-wise," he says. "We were all kind of going through the same thing at the same time."
For his part, Finch was trying to establish himself as a first-time NBA coach, taking over a team reeling from injuries, losses and the sudden firing of a popular coach.
Towns was trying to re-establish himself as one of the league's best centers after missing 18 games this season and seeing his family affected by unimaginable tragedy in 2020, as seven relatives -- including his mother, Jacqueline Cruz Towns -- died due to complications of COVID-19.
Edwards was trying to stabilize a rocky start to his rookie year, carrying the burden of being the No. 1 overall pick.
Rosas was trying to make the right decisions for a club that had gone through four head coaches and three different front offices in Towns' first six years -- not to mention years of uncertainty over the future sale of the team, which finally seems to be resolving now that a group led by former Major League Baseball player Alex Rodriguez is in final negotiations to purchase the franchise from Glen Taylor.
And most importantly, the entire franchise is still trying to reckon with the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, while he was in police custody last spring, and of Daunte Wright, who was shot by police during a traffic stop on April 11, and the continuing effects on its city.
It is a lot. But it is their shared lot.
"Your job is as a leader," Towns says, "is to make people play even better than they thought they could play and make them better."
Yes, Towns and Edwards have very different personalities. Towns is expansive and thoughtful in his answers to questions -- even ones he doesn't like; Edwards is genuinely bemused by an Irish reporter's accent, and he readily admits he has never heard of Rodriguez, a 14-time All Star and three-time American League MVP who will likely soon own the team. Off the court, Towns likes to play golf; Edwards grew up as a football player, and he has been known to watch football at his locker before Wolves games.
"Ant is not going to let anything not be fun," McDaniels said. "[Towns] always wants us to hold him accountable."
But each knows what it's like to play as the No. 1 pick. And each knows what it's like to lose the people who loved them the most.
So when Edwards went home over the All-Star break to his family in Georgia for the first time this season, Towns gave him some heartfelt advice.
"Family is the most valuable thing you get, man," Towns says. "You got Adidas money, you got that contract money. That's great. But you can never buy family time back. And if anyone knows, I know."
Then on March 14, after the best game of Edwards' young career, Towns gave him some support he may not have known he needed.
"It's up to us -- not just me, but all of us -- his big bros to really watch over him," Towns says. "And help him grow from being a boy to a man in this league."