Anthony Edwards didn’t sugarcoat it. He didn’t give you the “we’ll be back” speech or the “hats off to them, we gave it everything” deflection. He stood at the podium after the Spurs buried the Wolves 139-109 in Game 6 — a 30-point blowout at home — and essentially diagnosed his own team.
“We didn’t build the habits during the regular season, no.”
That’s the quote. That’s the whole article right there. A 24-year-old franchise player, unprompted, telling you his team wasn’t ready. Wasn’t disciplined. Didn’t do the work in October through April that you need to do if you’re going to survive in May.
The Spurs outrebounded Minnesota 60-29 in a playoff elimination game. Sixty to twenty-nine. Stephon Castle dropped 32/11/6 and became the youngest player in NBA history to post a 30/10/5 in the playoffs. San Antonio shot 56% from the floor and hit 18 threes on 38 attempts — a franchise playoff record. The Wolves didn’t just lose, they got dismantled by a team that plays like they’ve been doing this for decades, not months.
And Ant knew why.
“We try to do stuff on our own. I think that’s our problem.”
The star player of your franchise, the guy who just averaged 25.9 PPG across four playoff appearances, is telling you the Wolves go rogue. They stop running plays. They stop trusting the system. They freelance when the lights get bright and then wonder why the game plan breaks down in crunch time. That’s not a talent problem — the Wolves beat the Nuggets in round one. That’s an execution problem, and execution problems are culture problems, and culture problems don’t fix themselves between now and training camp just because everyone feels bad about it in May.
Edwards’ postgame clarity is both admirable and useless if nothing changes. He said it himself — “it definitely starts with me” — and then walked down to the Spurs bench with eight minutes left in a game his team was losing by 30, hugged Wembanyama, dapped up the whole roster while his teammates were still in their own huddle. Dirk Nowitzki said he’d never seen anything like it.
Udonis Haslem on Anthony Edwards:
“As a leader, I would not have walked down there and shook their hands with 8 minutes left.” pic.twitter.com/kztAaAo16I
— Underdog NBA (@UnderdogNBA) May 16, 2026
Ant’s explanation was honest in a different way: “I ain’t trying to be kiking with you all after you all whooped my ass.” Fair enough. But there’s a version of this where the leader of a franchise that just got bounced in the second round doesn’t walk over to join the other team’s postgame celebration while the clock is still running.
The talent case for the Wolves remains real. Edwards is a legitimate franchise cornerstone who just turned 24. But accountability-in-words without accountability-in-results is a loop Minnesota has been inside for two straight second-round exits. The 2024 WCF run felt like a breakthrough. The 2025 WCF run felt like confirmation. The 2026 loss to San Antonio — by 97 points across a six-game series — feels like regression, or at minimum a ceiling you can see from wherever you’re standing right now.
Mike Conley is an unrestricted free agent wondering if he’s still got it. The front office is reportedly carrying internal fears that Edwards could eventually push for a trade. And the best thing that came out of this playoff run was a quote from the best player on the team admitting they didn’t build the habits.
That’s where the Wolves are. The honesty is real. Now do something with it.
