Developing Anthony Edwards Has Seventeen Games to Give, and They Run Out on November 29

Anthony Edwards will have arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on Thursday, and ESPN's Shams Charania reported on Tuesday night that he could be out for up to two months. Sports Illustrated's Timberwolves site went further on Wednesday, writing that "the current expectation is that Edwards will be out for more than two months." Either way, the date that matters is earlier than both: December 1.

The NBA's 65-game rule lets a player miss at most 17 games and still qualify for MVP or All-NBA. Counting from Minnesota's home game against Golden State on Wednesday night, ESPN's schedule puts the seventeenth game on November 29 in Sacramento. The eighteenth is December 1 in Portland. If Edwards is not on the floor for at least 20 minutes that night, he is very likely ineligible for this season's awards. And as ESPN's report notes, MVP or All-NBA is what would make him eligible next summer for a four-year supermax worth about $304 million.

The arithmetic

The rule is stricter than "65 games." A game counts only if the player logs 20 minutes, with up to two exceptions of 15 to 20 minutes, according to NBC's explainer from when the rule began. Edwards has four qualifying games, including the 41 minutes he played in Monday's 127-125 overtime loss in Cleveland, where he scored 47. Missing 17 games leaves him exactly 65 of 82 possible, so he would need to play, and play 20 minutes, in every remaining game after December 1.

The schedule makes the margin smaller still. After December 2 the Wolves have no game until December 12. A player back at full strength on December 3 would therefore return on December 12, having missed 19 games, two too many. And "up to two months" from Thursday's surgery runs to the end of December. Through December 28 in Denver, that would be 28 missed games.

There is a carve-out for a season-ending injury once a player has reached 62 games, and it does not apply here. The only other route is the one that worked for Luka Doncic and Cade Cunningham in April, as covered below.

Why this is about money

Edwards has three years left on his current deal. Minnesota can offer him an extension now at 30% of the salary cap, SI reports. A supermax at 35% needs the award first. ESPN puts that supermax at four years and $304 million, with the first season in 2029-30. The difference between 30% and 35% over the same four years is roughly $43 million. That figure is our arithmetic, scaling ESPN's number, not a reported contract term.

He has been here before. Last season he played 60 qualifying games, missed 21 with runner's knee in the same leg, and, according to ABC7, was the only player to take the rule to an independent arbitrator. He lost. In the same week the league and the players' union granted "extraordinary circumstances" exceptions to Doncic, at 64 games, and Cunningham, at 63. Wolves coach Chris Finch said at the time that the rule "feels more like a suggestion than a rule."

So the honest summary is this. Edwards is about to lose a second straight shot at the award, and the supermax with it, because of a rule he already lost an arbitration over.

What the market thinks

Polymarket's 2026-27 MVP market had Edwards at a 1.3-cent bid and a 1.7-cent ask at 23:30 UTC on Wednesday, against 28 cents for Victor Wembanyama. Edwards was down 2.1 points on the week. On October 16, DraftKings had him at +1800, the same price as Jayson Tatum, which implies about 5.3% before any margin is removed. So the market has priced in most of the damage.

Be careful with the Polymarket number. Total volume across the whole MVP event is about $128,000, and the Edwards contract last traded at 0.7 cents, outside its own quoted range. That is a thin market, and its price is a rough guide, not a precise forecast.

Is 1.5% roughly right? Two things have to happen for an Edwards MVP. He has to be back by December 1, about 33 days after surgery, against reporting that points to longer. And he has to win from 65 games against a field led by Wembanyama, Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. If the first is a one-in-four chance, which we think is generous given SI's reporting, and the second something like his pre-injury 5%, the product is a little over 1%. The market is close to that. We see no edge in it either way, and anyone telling you otherwise should explain what they know about his knee.

The case against counting games

The strongest objection is that none of this should matter, and the NBPA has said so. On March 24 a union spokesperson said the rule "must be abolished or reformed to create an exception for significant injuries." The rule now gives a 25-year-old a financial reason to rush back from knee surgery by a calendar deadline rather than a medical one. A rule meant to stop healthy stars resting has turned into a penalty on injured ones. Edwards' manager, Justin Holland, put the camp's line simply: "It's a single focus -- winning a championship."

We agree that the incentive is bad, and the Wolves should ignore it. Their record without him last season was 12-9, and LaMelo Ball, Jaden McDaniels and Jonathan Kuminga now have to carry the scoring. But the objection does not change the count. The exceptions granted in April went to players one and two games short. Nothing suggests the league would stretch "extraordinary circumstances" to cover a player 10 or 11 games short because of a knee he hurt in the first week of the season. If the league did grant that, it would show we were wrong about how much discretion it is willing to use. We will know by December 1.

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