Anthony Edwards Said Year One With LaMelo Ball Will Have Downs and He Is Probably Right

MINNEAPOLIS — The clip began trending before most of the country had seen a Timberwolves practice photo.

Anthony Edwards stood at the top of the key. LaMelo Ball curled off a screen at the elbow. Jonathan Kuminga cut along the baseline. Ball found Kuminga in traffic without looking, throwing the pass to a spot Kuminga was still reaching.

Four seconds of a half-court workout were enough for comment sections to project a championship window.

Edwards did not let that go unchallenged. Asked at Fanatics Fest what Year One with LaMelo would actually look like, he offered the kind of answer that does not come from a franchise player trying to maximize offseason momentum.

“It’s definitely going to be ups and downs,” he told Taylor Rooks. “The first year together may have a lot of downs. We’ll celebrate both of them. Celebrate the ups, celebrate the downs.”

That is a clear-eyed statement from a 25-year-old who averaged a career-high 28.8 points per game last season and is entering what should be the most competitive window of his career. He knows what integrating a new star looks like. He has seen it fail elsewhere. He is not promising anything clean.

He is also, simultaneously, promising everything about the outcome. When asked about Oklahoma City and San Antonio, the two teams that claimed the West’s top seeds last season, Edwards was flat: “Against those two teams, I think we’re going to beat them.”

These two statements from the same player, taken together, tell you most of what you need to know about where Minnesota is entering 2026-27: there will be a lot of downs, and against the best teams in the West, Edwards believes they will win.

The roster is genuinely dangerous. Ball arrived from Charlotte in a deal that cost the Timberwolves Naz Reid and significant draft capital, a price for a point guard whose talent has never been questioned and whose availability has. Ball is 25. His vision from the perimeter is the kind that does not exist at volume in the modern game; his ability to make scoring effortless for a player like Edwards is precisely why Minnesota paid what it paid. Yahoo Sports reported that Edwards’ assessments of the partnership are already arriving with the confidence of someone who has studied the tape.

Kuminga completed the offseason. He turned down larger offers from the Lakers, Bulls, and Trail Blazers to sign a two-year, $12.4 million deal with Minnesota, a decision driven in part by Edwards, who recruited him personally. Kuminga’s assessment of what drew him here centered on Ball: “I’ve never played with somebody that can pass as good as LaMelo.” That choice from a player with meaningful alternatives tells you something about what this roster looks like from the outside. The move to secure Kuminga completed a starting lineup of Edwards, Ball, Dosunmu, Kuminga, and Rudy Gobert that has very few obvious weaknesses on paper.

Very few obvious weaknesses, with one exception that comes up every time someone raises the ceiling.

LaMelo Ball’s ankles have been discussed inside the Timberwolves facility with enough frequency that the jokes are already internal. In early September, a video circulated showing Donte DiVincenzo chiding Ball for leaving the weight room during a calf workout. Ball had surgery on the ankle that cost him the most time. DiVincenzo, recovering from his own injury, kept doing calf raises. It was funny. It also made an implicit point that no formal press availability was going to surface: the person at the center of this team’s championship ambitions is the person whose availability is least certain.

A Timberwolves team with Ball for 72-plus games is a legitimate Western Conference Finals contender. A Timberwolves team that loses Ball for a month in February is a different equation entirely, capable but reliant on Edwards carrying a load the roster was designed to distribute. As NBC Sports noted, the question of how good this team can be shifts dramatically depending on Ball’s health. The Western Conference the Timberwolves are joining is one where, as the Miami Heat minicamp underscored this week, multiple franchises have upgraded rosters and genuine Finals ambitions. There is no cushion in this conference for prolonged absences.

Edwards seems to understand the variable he cannot control. The “celebrate the downs” framing is not pessimism. It is the language of someone who has thought past the optimism into the grind of an 82-game season with a new star who operates differently than anyone he has played with. Ball is not Karl-Anthony Towns. The adjustment will take time. Edwards is acknowledging that.

What the workout video suggested, two players who have never shared an NBA court finding rhythm in the first weeks of September, is that the adjustment might happen faster than expected. Bleacher Report described the video as a trending moment after the Timberwolves’ blockbuster trade, capturing the two players working on the precise two-man game that makes this backcourt theoretically dangerous.

Whether that early ease translates to a playoff run against OKC’s depth and San Antonio’s interior strength remains genuinely open. Edwards believes it will. He said so. He also, in the same breath, acknowledged it might not come clean. That combination of confidence and realism is either the mark of a player who has matured into the demands of leading a championship contender, or the clearest possible preview of what a difficult November in Minneapolis will look like.

Training camp opens September 29. The answer starts then.