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There’s this thing that happens when Anthony Edwards, a very talented young basketball player for the Minnesota Timberwolves, launches himself toward the rim. We, the basketball-watching public, collectively lose our minds.
We gasp. We gawk. We swoon. We shriek. We leap off the couch. We frantically text our friends. And then we invoke The Name—though we know we really, probably shouldn’t.
“Man, that was just like …” (No, don’t say it.)
“You know, he sorta reminds me of …” (Stop, please.)
“He even looks a little like …” (Oh, for the love of Naismith, here it comes.)
MICHAEL JORDAN! (Sigh.)
The enthusiasm is certainly warranted, the comparison understandable. Edwards, like the guy whose name we can’t help but invoke, is absolutely electric. He doesn’t leap; he explodes. He doesn’t elevate; he soars. He doesn’t just dunk; he throws down with such velocity, such force, such violence that one wonders what the basket did to offend him.
Did you see what the Ant-Man did last week in Utah? He dunked so hard that he dislocated a finger and sent the closest defender, John Collins, to the locker room to undergo concussion tests. (Collins escaped with a “head contusion.”)
And it’s not just the athleticism and the dunks that have folks buzzing. It’s the smile and the swagger. It’s the gaudy stats (26.4 points, 5.5 rebounds, 5.2 assists per game) and the grace with which he produces them. It’s the footwork and the body control, the acceleration and the deceleration, the sleek turnaround jumpers, the smooth finishes at the rim—the artistry of it all. Sort of like the guy who dominated the ’90s and became universally known as the Greatest of All Time.
So prominent NBA commentators make the comparison. Kevin Garnett, a certified legend and unimpeachable authority on greatness, makes the comparison. Patrick Beverley, Edwards’s onetime teammate, makes the comparison. Fans with savvy digital skills produce extended YouTube homages to make the case. A guy on Twitter posts a spliced headshot—half Ant, half GOAT—to note their facial similarities.
We gasp and swoon because we physically have no choice. It’s instinctive, Pavlovian. Our brains instantly make the connection. Shooting guard? Check. Stands about 6-foot-4 to 6-foot-6? Check. Jumps high? Check. But we don’t have to invoke The Name. Hell, frankly, we shouldn’t. Because we know how this goes. And we should have learned our lesson by now.
NBA fans and pundits spent a good 25 years—starting when Jordan was still in his prime—desperately searching for the “Next Jordan,” frothing over every young phenom who jumped high, dunked hard, or made us gasp in wonder. They all failed, some more miserably than others.
In the late 1980s, it was Len Bias and Ron Harper who earned the tag. Then it was Harold Miner. Then Richard Dumas. Then Grant Hill. Then Penny Hardaway. Then Jerry Stackhouse. Then Kobe Bryant. Then Vince Carter. Even prep phenoms like Felipe López and Al Harrington got the label. Then came the international comps: the “Jewish Jordan” (Tamir Goodman), the “Turkish Jordan” (Hedo Turkoglu), and the “French Jordan” (Mickaël Piétrus). And then, of course, came LeBron James, who played nothing like MJ but has, by most measures, matched his fame and impact and accolades.
For most of them, to be stamped “Next” was more curse than honor.
But something wonderful happened in the 2010s, around the time James started making the Finals his second home: The chatter finally ceased. The “Next MJ” obsession just sort of died out. Maybe it’s because the league was flush with dazzling talents, including James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant, diminishing the desperation for a Jordan clone. Maybe it’s because shooting guard was no longer the glamour position. Maybe it’s because Jordan had finally been gone long enough for us to finally stop pining for him—or for his heir. We stopped expecting, speculating, and recklessly labeling. I wrote an entire piece about it in 2017, “The Ghost of the GOAT: Why There Isn’t a ‘Next Michael Jordan’ Anymore.”
The former “Nexts” I spoke to then—from Bryant to Carter to Hill to Stackhouse—seemed relieved that the frenzy was over, that no one else would be burdened with such impossible expectations. “For as cool as it may be, you don’t want it,” Carter told me then. “You’re like, No, thank you. That’s a lot. I just think constantly hearing that can do something to guys.”
Stackhouse was more blunt: “As far as the comparisons of living up to Michael Jordan, man, y’all can go to hell with that.”
Or as former commissioner David Stern told me, “It’s a very healthy thing” for the world to have moved on. And we had. At long last.
And yet …
“You know what we’re watching is the 1988-89 version of Michael Jordan,” ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins said of Edwards in January.
“He’s like a young ’84 Jordan,” Garnett said weeks later, on an episode of All the Smoke.
“You got a chance, brother, to be Michael Jordan,” Beverley said on JJ Redick’s podcast, The Old Man and the Three, recounting an actual conversation he had with Edwards.
To which I can only cringe and sigh, with the exasperation of a middle-aged dude who’s seen this play too many times, and say, again: People, we don’t have to do this.
Granted, I’m viewing this through a slightly personal lens, having started my own NBA journey as a Lakers beat writer in 1997, covering a young Kobe during a time when he alternately invited and shunned the Jordan comparisons. He idolized and emulated Jordan and even adopted some of his mannerisms. He came as close as anyone has, or perhaps ever will, to approximating Jordan in style, skill, and charisma. But the questions still grated on him.
“I don’t really care much for it,” Bryant told me in 2017. “You come to realize that you all have different paths. So Michael’s path and responsibility and his team were different than my own. … And being ‘the closest,’ I mean, what the hell does that mean? That doesn’t mean nothing to me.”
It’s been 26 years since Jordan won his last title, and 21 since he made his last jumper (in a Wizards uniform, of all things). Edwards wasn’t even 2 years old when MJ walked away for good. So maybe it’s useful to remind ourselves just what His Airness did, beyond the six championships, the six Finals MVPs, the five regular-season MVPs, the 11 All-NBA nods, and the nine All-Defensive team awards.
Jordan won 10 scoring titles, starting in his third NBA season, when he was 23—barely older than Edwards (who turns 23 in August) is now. That year, Jordan averaged an astounding 37.1 points per game, in an era of hand-checking, grinding defense, and crowded lanes, and without the benefit of the 3-pointer (he made 12 all season). He would average 32 points over an 11-season span, almost entirely on 2s and free throws, while shooting 51 percent from the field.
Jordan was so dominant as a rookie (granted, a seasoned one at age 21, after three years at North Carolina) that he finished sixth in the MVP balloting, earning two first-place votes. By the time he finished year four (where Edwards is now), Jordan had three All-NBA selections (two first-team), a Defensive Player of the Year trophy, and his first MVP award. He’d even grabbed a couple of slam dunk titles just for fun.
In the years that followed, all Jordan did was dominate the league, launch the greatest dynasty in modern sports, become a household name around the globe, and completely revolutionize athlete branding and marketing. “I wanna be like Mike!” sang the kids in the Gatorade commercial—and so did we all, regardless of age, height, ethnicity, or leaping ability.
The slogans and sing-alongs would eventually fade, but the aspirations and fantasies never did. So here we find ourselves, all these decades later, still pining for another Mike.
To date, Edwards does not have a single scoring title, or an All-NBA or All-Defensive award, or a stray fifth-place vote for MVP (though that could change this spring). And if it seems ludicrous to overlay Jordan’s résumé on Edwards’s, if it strikes you as obnoxious or unfair, well ... that’s exactly my point. It is all of those things. Which is why the whole discussion is so misguided.
None of this seems to faze Edwards, who sheepishly grinned and dropped his head when ESPN’s Malika Andrews raised the Jordan comparisons last month. “I mean, how would I look denying it?” Edwards said. “But I don’t want to be compared to somebody of such caliber. I mean, I haven’t did anything on his level yet. But I love it. I love that they got faith in me, for sure. I mean, they not wrong,” he said, chuckling.
By last week, the GOAT himself had weighed in, agreeing that “there are similarities in their games,” according to Fox Sports’ Chris Broussard, paraphrasing an exchange he had with Jordan.
It all seems harmless enough. But it wasn’t for so many of the young prodigies who had the label slapped on them decades ago—like former USC star Harold Miner, who was dubbed “Baby Jordan” in high school. “Now you start feeling the pressure of it, because you realize that you’re a talented player,” Miner told ESPN.com in a recent feature story. “But you’re not Michael Jordan.”
It was an understandable obsession back then, this quest to find the “Next.” We’d never seen anyone quite like Jordan until Jordan arrived. He thrilled and delighted and inspired us and forever left us wanting more. He retired three times, and even after the last one, in 2003, after a lackluster run with the Washington Wizards, we kept dreaming: “Maybe he’ll come back again.”
The NBA needed Jordan, or a reasonable facsimile, not just for his athletic prowess but for his charisma, his charm, his universal appeal as both a champion and a pitchman. And now we’re nearing another crossroads, with James and Stephen Curry approaching their career twilights, triggering another fretful discussion about who’s worthy of becoming the new Face of the League.
We say it’s about the “business” of the NBA, about the league’s need for a transcendent figure to keep the marketing machinery churning. But really, it’s about us. It’s about our selfish needs as fans. We wanted Jordan to play forever because of the way he made us feel. So we needed a New Jordan, a Next Jordan, an Heir Jordan.
But it was never a fair standard—not for Bryant or Carter or Hill or Stackhouse or anyone else who came along. Jordan wasn’t just a great leaper or dunker or scorer; he was a killer, a maniacal worker, a leader, a winner. He wasn’t just the greatest player of his era, but the greatest of all time. He had the personality, the magnetism, the camera-ready smile.
The mindless quest to find the Next was always doomed because no other human could check all of those boxes. Some couldn’t win. Some couldn’t lead. Some shunned the spotlight. Some lacked the drive. Some just couldn’t stay healthy.
So yes, it is ludicrous and it is unfair to stamp a 22-year-old as Jordan-like or Jordan-esque or Jordan-adjacent, no matter how good our intentions are. We start seeing the player through another lens. We start expecting, hoping, projecting. And when the player falls short, we blame him for failing us and label him a bust or a disappointment.
Edwards might actually be up to the task. He has the talent, the showmanship, the confidence, the charm, and, critically, the drive to be great. He just might dominate the league for the next decade, gathering rings and MVP trophies along the way. But he doesn’t need to be like Mike, and we shouldn’t ask him to be. There is no Heir, and there is no Next. We don’t need another GOAT. We should just enjoy the Ant.
