The 20-year-old phenom is already one of the league's top young players, but how does he match up against the game's best drop defenses?
Coming into the NBA, Anthony Edwards had his fair share of concerns regarding his shot selection and shooting consistencies with shaky percentage indicators. Despite this, his raw athletic tools and explosive burst made him one of the best and most polarizing prospects in the 2020 draft class as a whole. But, how well has Edwards grown as a shooter to become a real threat against drop coverages? He's come a long way in terms of his ability to beat them.
Shredding Drop-Defenders
Anthony Edwards has been much more comfortable getting to and finishing at the rim with a dropping big in his sophomore year. Edwards is shooting 63% at the rim according to Cleaning the Glass, which is a 4% increase from last year. Edwards' top end acceleration has already caused issues for defenders in the NBA, but the main issue was Edwards being much more comfortable straight line driving than changing angle when attempting to beat the drop-defender. Using more of his counter-dribbles against bigs, whether it be a euro-step or fluidly switching hands with the ball, Ant has taken a leap changing angles in order to get to the rim more effectively.
Rim Denials
Edwards is way too prone at getting denied at the rim, and there can be many reasons for this issue. One of it is the lack of floater-game Edwards has. Ant has a relatively poor floater-game as he is only shooting 32% on floaters on 43 attempts via NBA. The lack of floater would make him a less threat when being faced on a drop. Edwards absorbing contact is also not there for him right now, even though it is much more refined than in his rookie year he still struggles to absorb through contact. Most of the time he will force up a wild shot when getting in contact with the drop-big. Anthony Edwards this year has averaged 3,9 FTA a game and 22.5% FTr via Basketball Reference.
Settling for Jumpers
Edwards' main source of answer for drop-coverages is settling on what the defense is giving him. Usually when the ball-screen defender is in lock and trailing Anthony Edwards will pull-up. Edwards is not the most efficient mid-range shooter in the league as he is shooting 33.1% on mid-ranges this season via PBP. He does not shoot many threes against drop-coverages which was surprising to me when I made a deep-dive into this, I only accumulated about two clips on him taking pull-up 3PT shots.
Capitalizing On Advantages
Edwards is not some magician with the ball but finding players off of basic reads is still promising for a 20-year-old's growth. Edwards can read the defense just fine, his best reads are reacting to the help-coming and capitalizing on defenders over-helping.
Anthony Edwards doesn't have many reps as a PnR operator, but when he does it shows the glimpse of his playmaking promise. He is averaging 0.85 PPP as a PnR ball-handler which is 53rd%ILE via NBA. As a PnR operator he is more seamlessly fitting with a roller like Naz Reid than a big like Karl-Anthony Towns who most of the time chooses to Pick N Pop. Edwards is already a phenomenal pocket passer in PnR actions and is always patient, In the graphic below It will show the Assist Locations with Edwards/Towns and Edwards/Reid via Two-Man Game made by StadiumSpeak.
Overview
To summarize, I believe Anthony Edwards has a long way to go before he excels overall against drop-coverage defense. But, the massive strides he's made compared to his rookie year is astounding nonetheless. The 20-year-old still has a long road ahead of him but 2 seasons in all the NBA world has been seeing from Anthony Edwards is getting better and better.
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