Anthony Edwards’ dunk on Kevin Durant was a passing-of-the-torch NBA moment

“Passing the torch” sounds like such a loving exchange between two people. Think of how you’d handle a torch — gingerly maintaining your grip while making sure you don’t move too swiftly as to burn the person you’re passing it to. I imagine both people’s eyes fixed on the fire, knowing that the flame is supposed to be controlled, but still wary that a wayward ember might go rogue and injure someone. When the torch is finally exchanged, there’s probably a nod of acceptance and relief that nobody was hurt. It’s peaceful.

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards’ series-ending dunk on Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant on Sunday, completing the Timberwolves’ four-game sweep over the Suns, was not peaceful. It was a violent, explosive dunk that grabbed the torch flame-first and cemented Edwards as the future, while leaving Durant empty-handed at the twilight of his career.

ANTHONY EDWARDS 🤯 pic.twitter.com/ciRymf4yTD

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 29, 2024

Even though Durant’s Suns came into the series against Edwards’ Timberwolves as the lower sixth seed, it was the most likely upset in the first round. The Timberwolves had been unproven, young, and prone to late-season meltdowns like they did two years ago when they blew the most fourth-quarter double digits leads ever in a playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies and last year when their team imploded after Wolves center Rudy Gobert threw punches at his teammate, forward Kyle Anderson. If any team was going to fold against a veteran squad like Phoenix — led by Durant, who’s had four NBA Finals appearances and two championships — it would be the Timberwolves.

That’s where Edwards comes in. 

At just 22 years old, Edwards has become the emotional leader and the most important player on a team that already had 16-year point guard, Mike Conley, four-time All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns and the aforementioned Gobert, who has won defensive player of the year three times. Edwards has made no secret of his admiration and idolization of Durant, who entered the league when Edwards was still in elementary school. But Edwards still went at his hero — talking trash from the moment he got his first isolation play on Durant — and he never relented, culminating in a decisive 40-point performance in Game 4 that snuffed out Durant’s respectable 33-point effort.

We’ve never seen Durant so thoroughly outplayed in a playoff series before, especially since he entered his prime. The thought of anyone being able to seemingly demoralize one of the greatest scorers the league has ever seen felt impossible when the series started, let alone years ago when Durant was lording over the NBA with the Golden State Warriors. But it happened with complete destruction.

Which brings us back to the dunk. 

Every year brings a number of unforgettable dunks, but it’s rare that one single moment of airborne impact can shift the trajectory of the sport. 

In 1983, NBA great Julius Erving had his legendary dunk over Los Angeles Lakers guard Michael Cooper, marking that it was his year to be the best in the league and its champion. In 1991, Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan shook two New York Knicks players before dunking on rival Knicks center Patrick Ewing on his way to his first championship. The dunk signified Jordan’s emergence as the new king of the game. In 1994, Warriors center Chris Webber invoked another changing of the guard taking the ball behind-the-back before dunking on Suns forward Charles Barkley, signaling that a new generation of power forwards who took their influence from Barkley, the Round Mound of Rebound, would soon take over the NBA.

Edwards over KD caused the same type of tectonic shift. 

With just about two minutes left in Game 4, Edwards took Beal on an isolation. Between the legs dribble. Hesitation with the left hand. A first step that moved at supersonic speed. And an elevation. Durant started to jump to block, but realized he couldn’t reach Edwards’ apex. So he bailed mid-jump. But his body was still present enough to get eviscerated by the furiousness of the impact.

It’s an apt metaphor for the series: Durant realizing, for once in his career, that he can’t reach the heights of his adversary.

It has to be a humbling feeling, and one felt across the league as my generation’s luminaries are seeing their sports mortality. We’re already facing a playoffs in which LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Durant won’t make it out of the first round. We’re a few days away from the possibility that Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić will be the only MVP winner to make it to the second round this season. Maybe the previous champions have second and third winds in the coming years, but those deep playoff runs feel more like one-offs than signifiers of new dynasties. Durant, though, has had the most unusual career of those champions, and a future that seems the most dire.

Durant’s Suns have no first round draft picks from 2025 to 2030. He’s already expressed frustration with the way he was used in the Phoenix offense. Will he force his way out, which would mean sending him to his third team since leaving Golden State in 2019 and the fifth team in his career, or will he stay with a Suns organization that doesn’t seem to have a path to a championship and his “only” two titles coming after joining a Warriors team that had just broken the record for regular-season games. Either way, Durant will have had a career that’s hard to quantify.

He’ll end his career well within the top 10 of total points ever scored and having taken two franchises to the Finals, yet he may never have a statue built in front of any NBA arena. Durant has been on some version of a superteam or Big 3 for the past 15 years and hasn’t made it out of the second round since he left the Warriors in 2019. Sure, there are some very unique circumstances behind the disappointments, but Durant has been the leader of each of these teams.

This season, teaming up with Devin Booker (who scored 49 points on Sunday) and Bradley Beal was supposed to be his best chance to break that spell. But it all fell apart sooner than anyone expected. Now, Durant is left looking up at the future crashing down on his head.

The unknown in all of this is what does Edwards do now? He was always going to eventually land after taking off to dunk on Durant, but his career is primed to keep rising indefinitely. His next opponent is the league’s current immovable object in two-time MVP Jokic.

While the Nuggets are going to be favorites, the results of this series won’t be as telling as what will happen in the years to come. Edwards, with his gritty defense, million-dollar smile, atomic dunks and unnerved demeanor, started the season up next, but he’s up now. He finds himself somewhere that’s become familiar to him in any given game: looking down at anyone who dares to block his path before they realize there’s no point in even trying.

This is what happens when you have a torch, and you’re ready to set fire to anything in your way.