Ant: The Incredible Journey of NBA Rising Star Anthony Edwards

Minnesota Star Tribune reporter Hine debuts with a competent chronicle of Anthony “Ant” Edwards’s ascent from Pop Warner running back to NBA all-star. Growing up in Atlanta, Edwards dreamed of playing in the NFL while making a name for himself as one of the best youth football players in the state, but a series of injuries caused him to switch to basketball in high school. At first, he was relatively unremarkable on the court and wasn’t among the starters on his youth team, but tireless practice eventually landed him a spot on the University of Georgia’s squad. There, he rose to prominence by scoring 33 points in the second half of a 2019 game against top-ranked Michigan State. The Minnesota Timberwolves selected Edwards as the number one pick in the 2020 draft, and after a bumpy start to his rookie season, the arrival of coach Chris Finch helped Edwards improve his shot and transform the team into a fiercer competitive force than it had been in years. Though the focus is largely on Edwards’s athletic achievements, Hine provides a sensitive account of how he worked through his grief over his mother’s and grandmother’s deaths from cancer when he was 14 by practicing his game. This workmanlike biography gets the job done. Agent: Joseph Perry, Perry Literary. (June)