MINNEAPOLIS — Jaden McDaniels, never shy about speaking his mind, proclaimed during Wolves media day a couple of weeks ago about teammate Anthony Edwards: “This is Year Seven. I think this could be the MVP season for him.”

Edwards, who has grown alongside McDaniels since they were rookies together in the 2020-21 season, returned the favor later at media day by pushing for McDaniels to make his first All-Star team this year.

It seemed like two teammates casting out wishes more than anything.

But through a handful of preseason games, including an emphatic performance by both players in Monday’s 122-104 win over the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, it suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

With Wolves starters logging heavy minutes into the middle of the third quarter, Edwards (26) and McDaniels (22) combined for 48 points and made nine of their 13 3-point attempts.

Many were wide open catch-and-shoot looks engineered by new Wolves point guard LaMelo Ball. As my new Minnesota Star Tribune colleague Sarah Todd points out, Ball is going to make life very easy for two players who have for a long time had to work harder for their shots and points.

Edwards made a deep buzzer-beating 3 to end the first half with 20 points, besting only McDaniels’ 19 as Minnesota built a 62-50 lead against a Knicks team that played all five starters from last year’s NBA title-winning team.

More than just numbers, Edwards looks dialed in and freed up on a version of the Wolves that seems built with his gifts on both ends of the court in mind.

Teammates have raved about his leadership, and there is a seriousness that has permeated these early preseason games even as he maintains his youthful exuberance.

Winning MVP in a league dominated recently by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic and the emerging Victor Wembanyama is a big ask, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Edwards puts himself in that conversation.

Being a first-team All-NBA player for the first time (he’s been on the second team twice) is well within Ant’s grasp.

And if McDaniels ends up as the second scoring option many nights with a gifted playmaker and scorer like Ball guiding him, he could easily be a lockdown defender who averages 20 points.

We call players like that All-Stars.

I know it’s early. But it’s right in front of our eyes, including Wednesday in the team’s lone preseason home game at Target Center.

Here are four more things that caught my attention Monday:

Jonathan Kuminga sat out Monday’s game with what head coach Chris Finch termed “bumps and bruises that we’re just being overly cautious with.”

His replacement in the starting lineup was a bit of a surprise: Cody Williams, the young forward acquired from Utah in the Josh Green trade.

Williams seemed a bit out of place initially next to Ball, Edwards, McDaniels, Rudy Gobert and the Knicks’ five championship starters, but he fit in relatively well. He was a plus-4 overall in 15 minutes, including plus-3 in 12 minutes with the starters (six minutes at the start of the game and six more at the start of the second half).

Williams finished with six points by making his only two 3-point attempts and was active on defense, including a timely block of a Jalen Brunson shot when the Knicks’ star guard tried to take him off the dribble.

The Wolves were likely curious to see Williams play with top-end talent after languishing with the rebuilding Jazz, and it’s possible he could carve out a role here.

That said, even when Kuminga presumably returns to the starting lineup, the Wolves’ best five-man unit probably features their sixth man, Ayo Dosunmu, in his place next to the other four starters.

The Wolves didn’t give Dosunmu a five-year, $112 million contract this past offseason to play typical reserve minutes.

Dosunmu’s ability to blend in when needed and stand out when called upon is a nice combination to have. He finished with 11 points, four rebounds, three steals, two assists and a block in 20 minutes Monday.

Kuminga didn’t play, nor did Terrence Shannon Jr., but the Wolves’ substitutions were worth tracking for clues nonetheless.

Dosunmu was the first to check in for Williams midway through the first quarter, while Bones Hyland and Joan Beringer soon followed. Trey Lyles got in during the first quarter, while Jalen Clark got a shift in the second quarter.

Beringer is showing enough early in the preseason that he should get regular rotation minutes when Gobert is off the floor. Kuminga projects as a starter, while Dosunmu will play a ton and Hyland figures to be a rotation player (and a potentially important one at that). Chris Finch is going to pine for Lyles’ veteran dependability and will probably have 13-17 minutes earmarked for him every game.

The wild cards when it comes to minutes are Shannon, Williams and Clark. Kuminga and Beringer could have massive floor and ceiling discrepancies from game to game.

In a sense they still need to show us everything because we’re just four games into the preseason.

But one of the biggest question marks on this year’s team is how the Wolves will function defensively in the non-Gobert minutes, particularly against teams that can throw a lot of bulk and height at them.

They also have enough talent to form a bench, but they don’t have the reliability factor that comes from repetitions and experience in many cases.

How long it takes them to sort that out, and how many games they can win on the fly thanks to the audacity of their backcourt, could be the difference between a good season and a great one.

©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC