Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards became the latest young NBA star to sound off against the previous eras of the game when he used an interview in the Wall Street Journal to say that the legendary Michael Jordan was the only player with a high skill level in his time. That led to a predictable news cycle aimed against Edwards, punctuated by the ESPN veteran Tony Kornheiser on Tuesday.
Speaking about Edwards’ comments on Pardon the Interruption, Kornheiser ripped Edwards, saying the Team USA gold medalist should simply admit he knows not of which he speaks rather than embarrass himself to sports fans.
“He’s got to look at these people because he’s destroying NBA legends,” Kornheiser said. “This is a guy, he’s a talented player … he should have stopped with this quote: ‘I didn’t watch it, I can’t speak on it.’ That’s where he should have stopped, because you are putting generations of NBA stars and putting them in a trash heap.”
“He sounds like a fool.”
“Nobody watches anymore. The people at networks don’t watch!”
Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon had quite the reaction to Anthony Edwards’ comments on 1990s basketball today on ‘PTI’: pic.twitter.com/U0MKkiZjUW
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 27, 2024
As he tends to do, Michael Wilbon had to one-up his elder friend and cohost. As he also tends to do, Wilbon took the opportunity to talk down to the younger generation including Edwards, a breakout star of the league Wilbon covers for ESPN.
“Let me go further, and let me be old man, get off my lawn now,” Wilbon said. “Nobody watches anymore. The people at networks don’t watch … all they have is video in their damn hands 24/7 and apparently they can’t fix their eyes on it to watch what people did. They watch clips, they don’t watch games, they don’t know jack. It’s not just players, it’s the culture we live in now. That’s why we are old and say get off my lawn. That’s what we’re stuck with, and Ant-Man reflects it, oh he does.”
Wilbon’s buddy, Magic Johnson, had a few words for Edwards earlier this week on The Stephen A. Smith Show. If anyone has a bone to pick with Edwards over these comments, it’s the man literally nicknamed Magic for his brilliant basketball skill, who just so happened to play at exactly the same time as Jordan.
Kornheiser echoed Wilbon and implored youngsters like Edwards to do their homework.
“This is that recency bias that you and I hate,” Kornheiser said. “This is the lack of interest in looking at history. Most of us got jobs by studying what happened in our industry before we got there. But apparently in sports, if you’re a great athlete you don’t feel you have to do that. But it would behoove the Ant-Man to do it.”
While it is about as perfect a PTI topic as there could be, Kornheiser and Wilbon aren’t just old cranks on this one. The strange new sport wherein young athletes crap all over the history of their league is odd and unnecessary.
