USA TODAY International Edition
Edwards’ double- double: Play at Georgia, then NBA
ATHENS, Ga. – The potential No. 1 pick in next year’s NBA draft comes walking down the hallway of the practice facility where he’ll spend much of his time the next 41⁄ months, past 2 the portraits of Dominique Wilkins and a group of mostly former pros that is strikingly nondescript given that we are smack in the middle of Georgia.
This is a state, after all, that has produced the ninth- most players in NBA history – more than 20 who are currently in the league – nine former All- Stars and a handful of basketball’s most recognizable names, almost none of whom have any association with the flagship university of their home state.
By definition, this makes Atlanta’s Anthony Edwards different. He’s the one who stopped the decade- long parade of McDonald’s All- Americans leaving the state to play college basketball, he’s the one who decided to spurn the blue bloods for a rebuild at a program that hasn’t won an NCAA tournament game since 2002, and he’s the one who decided to take on an existential challenge that will go beyond the wins and losses during the season:
Can he make basketball at the University of Georgia matter?
“We’ve never had a player like that here besides Dominique Wilkins, who can come in as a five- star and change the atmosphere around here,” said guard Tyree Crump, one of just five scholarship players who returned after Tom Crean’s first season as head coach. “People don’t expect us to be that good because it’s Georgia. They say it’s a football school. I say we’re a football school and a basketball school.”
In some ways, though, it feels like Edwards is still hiding in plain sight, which is a pretty hard thing to do for an 18- yearold shooting guard with explosiveness and shooting touch whose body already looks like a grown- up James Harden and whom ESPN recently projected as the No. 2 draft pick behind Memphis center James Wiseman.
“It is clear in my mind he should be the No. 1 pick,” said Brian Snow, a recruiting analyst for 247 Sports who tracked Edwards in high school and on the summer circuit. “He is exactly what the NBA looks for in a guard, and he is motivated to be that.”
But the lack of buzz around Edwards’ debut Tuesday against Western Carolina is noticeable, even as he put up 24 points with nine rebounds in a victory.
Locally, the focus is almost entirely on Georgia football, which remains in the College Football Playoff conversation after beating Florida last weekend.
And before this article, none of the major national publications have dispatched reporters to Athens to check
in on how Crean has completely overhauled his roster with nine freshmen, including the highest- rated in- state recruit to ever sign with the Bulldogs.
Crean might be a relative newcomer to the Southeast, but he understands this dynamic, even embraces it, because of how much work he has to do to get Georgia basketball into the upper echelon of the Southeastern Conference after winning just two conference games and losing his best player, Nic Claxton, to the NBA draft.
But Crean also understands that for the people who matter most in churning out the state’s deep well of talent, there are going to be a lot of eyeballs on how Edwards performs and how he develops in what could be a pretty difficult environment on a young team without other elite- level recruits. For Crean, this is about cramming as much development as he can for a player he believes could make an NBA All- Defensive team earlier in his career than Dwyane Wade and Victor Oladipo, whom Crean helped mold into future All- Stars.
Ultimately, if Georgia is going to get the next Anthony Edwards, it needs to do a good job with this one.
“From the first unofficial visit, we harped on how much better he had to get and talked about it, showed it, and that’s where we recruited him from,” Crean said. “That’s how we recruited everybody else, so we’re not going to change just because of where he’s projected.”
‘ I’m going to do my best to change it’
In some ways, though, there was no bigger challenge for Edwards than making this leap given that nobody of his pedigree had done it. While every graphic in Georgia’s practice facility has been put there by Crean with recruiting in mind – including a lit- up NBA logo in his office with $ 581,831,207 underneath it to track the total amount of contracts signed by his former players at Marquette and Indiana – the biggest factor in landing a potential No. 1 player was geography.
Edwards comes from a tightknit family. He was raised by his older brother and sister after their mother died several years ago, and he spends time with his infant nephew every chance he gets. To have that support structure 90 minutes away before the NBA takes him to a city he’ll have no role in choosing was a huge selling point for Georgia, as well as Crean’s track record of developing players in the league.
“I wanted to come to Georgia, and once they got a new coach I started considering it,” he said. “I feel happy about myself making that choice because a lot of the other highly ranked players go out of state and play for other schools. I can’t say I’m going to change ( the trend), but I can try. I’m going to do my best to change it.”
Amir Abdur- Rahim, who spent a lot of time recruiting Edwards to Georgia before becoming the Kennesaw State head coach this year, said he thinks it can be a sustainable pitch for Crean. Among the elite Atlanta- area prospects who left the state for college was his older brother, Shareef, who went to Cal for one season before a decorated 13- year NBA career. So he knows the potential and the challenge of getting those types of players to Athens.
Abdur- Rahim said he thinks that narrative could have changed in 2005 when Lou Williams signed with Georgia. Instead, Williams went to the NBA draft and top- ranked players spent the next decade- plus all but ignoring the Bulldogs.
In fact, in the era of Rivals. com, which began ranking players in 2003, there have been 96 prospects from Georgia high schools who were given either a four- or five- star designation. Among those, just nine wore a Bulldogs uniform and five of those are on the current team.
But now, Abdur- Rahim sees Edwards’ decision as having the potential to influence an entire generation of Georgia high school players and build a brand at a program that has had very little identity.
“I told you, you’re going to be a pro no matter what but think differently,” Abdur- Rahim said. “You don’t need Kentucky or Duke to make you who you are. You can start your own way. Last year, we probably had the top 30 sophomores on campus, and I remember one of them told me, ‘ Shoot, if y’all get Ant, if it’s good enough for him, it has to be good enough for me’ because they all love that kid so much.”
Searching for a basketball identity
There are potential pitfalls, too. Although Georgia’s recruiting class had four other four- star players, they were ranked on the fringe of the top 100, which is typically indicative of longterm potential rather than instant impact in a league like the SEC. Though Crump and junior big man Rayshaun Hammonds are proven double- figure scorers, the reality is that Edwards will be asked to do a lot and guarded like he’s the only player on the roster teams have to stop.
Even Edwards wonders whether he’ll be able to show the full range of his skills with the amount of double- teams he expects to see.
“And I’m OK with that,” he said. “At the end of the day someone can say they held me to a certain amount of points but as long as we win that’s all that matters. I feel like if they overplay me, the next man is open. I have the same excitement for me having 24 points as I have for my teammates who got 24 points.”
In the big picture, just having a player like Edwards on campus is an opportunity Georgia basketball hasn’t really had before – not just to win, but to build a real identity as a place that matters to big- time players who grow up nearby.
“We just have to get them here,” Crean said. “What we’re trying to do is balance the fact that it’s a tremendous school and get people in here and say, ‘ Wait, there’s more history than you realize.’ It’s all here at Georgia. Maybe we don’t have the sustained tradition in basketball and the immediacy, and I get that. But we’ve had it where we’ve been and we’re going to build it here because it’s all here to build.”
If Edwards does what he’s supposed to do over the next few months, it will get built a whole lot faster.