Netflix's Starting 5, a documentary delivering an unfiltered look at the life of five professional basketball players, premiered on Tuesday, and the show featured a spicy tidbit involving Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards and Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum from a 2023-24 game between the two squads.
The premiere episode centered on Edwards's starring role in a November 2023 game against the Celtics, a 114-109 overtime win for the Timberwolves in which Edwards scored a game-high 38 points, played strong defense against Tatum down the stretch and gained possession of the ball after he became entangled with the Celtics star early in the overtime period.
After the game, Edwards scoffed at Tatum's perceived status—by some—as the "best player in the league" in a locker room moment with the Netflix cameras rolling.
"You seen Tatum trying to get me on the switch, locked his ass up 2 times. He started talking s---. Tatum was talking crazy, saying, ‘Yeah, I’m here,’ then I said, ‘I’m coming again.’ Talking ‘bout best player in the league, y’all trippin’."
Edwards may have won that battle, but Tatum won the next one between the two stars, as he poured in a game-high 45 points to lead Boston to an overtime victory in the two clubs' next matchup in January. And Tatum, whose Celtics went on to win the NBA title, ultimately got the last laugh in the 2023-24 campaign.
But there's no doubt that Edwards, who established himself as a two-way force while helping the Timberwolves advance to the Western Conference finals for the first time since the 2003-04 season, is closing the gap on the best players in the league.
And Edwards's trash talk of Tatum is out there now, perhaps providing added motivation to the Celtics star when the two next meet. Edwards and Tatum will go head-to-head again twice in the 2024-25 regular season, first on Nov. 24 and again on Jan. 2.
