© Joe Rondone | 2020 Nov 12
If Anthony Edwards wants to be selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft, he’s not going out of his way to convince teams there aren’t any red flags.
In an interview with ESPN that dropped this week, Edwards, who will be selected to play professional basketball on Wednesday, said he’s not that into professional basketball.
“To be honest,” he says, “I can’t watch basketball.”
He retells the story about the first time he dunked and how it signaled to him that he was talented and could accomplish something he might not have been able to in football, which was his first love. So that’s the direction he went, simple as that, hanging up his cleats. “That’s all I needed to see,” he says.
“I’m still not really into it,” he says. “I love basketball, yeah. It’s what I do.”
He’s not entirely convincing. He says if he were drafted by the NFL tomorrow, he’d let basketball go. “Because you can do anything on the field,” he explains. “You can spike the ball. You can dance. You can do all type of disrespectful stuff.” In the NBA, he says, “you can’t do any of that. You’ll get fined.”
Despite this bizarre admission, Edwards is still projected by many to be selected by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the first pick. Should that not happen, Edwards could fall to number three, as most believe that James Wiseman is Golden State’s preferred selection. The Warriors worked out Edwards twice, the first of which was reportedly underwhelming.