The Real Opening Night 2026-27

I said when we recorded on Tuesday night that the game I was most excited for by a long shot was Timberwolves Heat and get to see two high profile players, LaMelo Ball and Giannis Antetokounmpo in their new places.

And I really enjoy seeing teams play against other, you know, high level competition.

You know, you don't want to there's not too much signal in the very, very beginning of the season.

Can say that a lot over the next week.

But you get a sense of a couple of different things.

And I don't know how much of it I want to attribute to LaMelo Ball.

Definitely some.

Definitely not all.

But Anthony Edwards was phenomenal in this game.

I'll give the basic stats first.

45 points on 16 of 29 from the field.

9 of 17 from 3.

4 of 5 from the line.

Also had 10 rebounds, 3 assists.

And was plus 25 in the 33 minutes he played.

and if you're miami yeah anthony edwards was great i thought he had some of his better passes as well to the weak side to get other guys open threes they ended up at 21 out of 50 from downtown obviously lamello was very active as well his first shot of the game after they gave up a pick six on their first possession was just one of those one-legged threes from 29 feet out off the pick and roll i that looked fantastic and edwards was off the ball a little bit more as well the miami defense is designed to give up more threes and take away the rim but yeah i think like the talent of those two guys was enough on this night and while yannis was excellent early the heat didn't have a ton else and i think my did you want to talk any more about edwards performance

A little bit.

So why I said you could partially credit LaMelo, and this is also partially the Heat system, is that he faced a lot more single coverage.

Now, some of that single coverage was him torching very good defenders.

There was the play where he drilled a step back over Bam Adebayo.

He had a number of plays where he beat Davion Mitchell.

It wasn't just, oh, they put a scrub on him.

I mean, the Heat play four capable defenders, and Klay Thompson used to be one.

Yes,

and one incapable.