Edwards’ ascension has Warriors feeling sting of NBA draft hindsight

The history of the NBA draft is rife with tales of rotten luck, accurate foresight, fantastic surprises, failed risks and allegations of a rigged lottery. Every franchise knows the feeling of being burned a regrettable decision that in many instances altered its trajectory.

Hindsight is genius forever tortured.

The Warriors have been living with that torture for almost two years.

They’ve spent much of that time mentally smacking themselves upside their collective head for a missed opportunity – and the regret has gotten more painful over the past two weeks.

Slapped into the offseason for days before the 2024 NBA playoffs, the Warriors can only watch from afar as Anthony Edwards is earning the privilege of being compared to Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant – while representing the Minnesota Timberwolves instead of Golden State.

Edwards is the Timberwolves’ lead exterminator, and they are using these playoffs to establish themselves as the most ferocious team on earth. Now that Edwards is spinning and winning and grinning through the playoffs, everybody loves him. Every team wishes they had their own Ant.

Golden State, according to league and team sources, was presented with an opportunity to draft Edwards in 2020.

Though the Warriors finished with the worst record in the league (15-50) in 2019-20, bad lottery luck dropped them into the No. 2 slot. Minnesota, which had the third-worst record (19-46) jumped Golden State for the rights to the No. 1 overall pick.

The Timberwolves were willing to swap out of No. 1, but their attempts to engage the Warriors were not successful. Though the Timberwolves correctly believed the Warriors were focused on 7-foot-1 center James Wiseman, Golden State also believed there was no need to move up because Minnesota was focused on Edwards, a 6–foot-4 guard.

The Warriors did, however, consider Edwards. They scouted him on multiple occasions and came to the same conclusion as most other teams. That he was intriguing, but he was the star of a mediocre team – the 16-16 Georgia Bulldogs – and his effort was inconsistent.

Edwards was on Golden State’s draft board, but the name at the top belonged to Wiseman. Both players were 19 years old, but Edwards played 1,057 minutes over 32 games at Georgia while Wiseman put in only 69 minutes over three games at Memphis before he was declared ineligible.

There were questions about both. But if anyone – including Edwards or the Timberwolves – now insists they knew Edwards would be as remarkable as he has become, dare them to take a polygraph and count how many seconds pass before they fail.

Golden State and Minnesota each chose a player that fit a positional need. The Timberwolves, with Karl-Anthony Towns at center, had little interest in Wiseman. The Warriors, with Stephen Curry as their lead guard, were not of a mind to add Edwards.

Wiseman, who turned 23 in March, spent most of this season as the third-string center for the Detroit Pistons, who finished with the worst record (14-68) in the NBA. He remains in development.

Edwards, who turns 23 in August, has appeared in two NBA All-Star Games and will be the youngest member of the Team USA roster chosen for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. He is a leader on a championship contender that features four veterans between the ages of 28 and 36.

The Timberwolves finished with the third-best record (56-26) in the Western Conference and fourth-best record in the league. They swept the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs and have a 2-0 lead over the defending champion Denver Nuggets in the conference semifinals.

Teams are finding it is incredibly difficult to score against the Wolves – and impossible to stop Edwards.

This is not to assign blame within the Golden State organization. The Warriors chose not swap picks with Minnesota because they could get their man at No. 2 without giving up anything else. The Warriors were intoxicated by Wiseman’s length, athleticism and potential. The decision to draft him followed the wishes of the majority.

Only if the Warriors could know then what they know now would they have chosen Edwards over Wiseman. They would have the man with the goods to take the torch from Curry and keep them among the elite. Dr. Hindsight never misses.

The Warriors can only accept their reality. No playoffs. A desire to regain contender status. And an offseason spent seeking an answer to the question that nagging them before the 2020 draft.

How can we get better now without sacrificing our future?

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