Anthony Edwards surgery is the bombshell hanging over Wednesday's game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Golden State Warriors, with multiple reports on Tuesday saying the Timberwolves superstar will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his ailing right knee and could miss up to two months. On the other side of the same fixture, Golden State's rookie sensation Yaxel Lendeborg is listed as questionable with left foot inflammation, leaving both teams sweating over their most important young players before a ball is even tipped at Target Center in Minneapolis.
The double injury blow reshapes a game that already carried plenty of intrigue. Minnesota must prepare for life without the player who has averaged 33.3 points over its first four games, while Golden State must decide whether to risk the rookie who has just produced one of the most remarkable starts to a career in modern NBA history. With the Warriors returning home to face the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday, and the Timberwolves facing a long stretch without their franchise guard, Wednesday's decisions will echo well beyond one night in Minneapolis.
According to multiple reports on Tuesday, Edwards will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his ailing right knee, a procedure that could sideline him for up to two months. The news landed one day after his finest performance of the young season, a 47-point explosion on 19-of-34 shooting in Minnesota's 127-125 overtime defeat to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday. That defeat had already been covered in depth on this site, with Donovan Mitchell's go-ahead fadeaway with 48 seconds left in overtime sealing the win for Cleveland, but Edwards' 47 points were the headline act of a thrilling night at Rocket Arena.
The timing could hardly be worse for Minnesota. The Timberwolves host the Warriors on Wednesday in Minneapolis, and they must now do so, in all likelihood, without the 25-year-old guard around whom their entire attack is built. Edwards has averaged 33.3 points over the team's first four games, and his ability to create offence from nothing has masked plenty of early-season growing pains. Without him, the scoring burden falls on a supporting cast that has shown flashes but has not yet been asked to carry a team for weeks at a time.
Golden State, meanwhile, has its own fitness headache. Lendeborg, the 24-year-old rookie who has taken the league by storm, is listed as questionable for Wednesday's game with left foot inflammation. The Warriors' injury report, published on Tuesday, describes the problem as left foot inflammation, and respected beat reporter Anthony Slater reported that Lendeborg was icing the foot after Monday's game in Denver. The San Francisco Chronicle's Luca Evans wrote on social media that Lendeborg was limping on his way to the post-game media room, a worrying sight after the best game of his short career.
Lendeborg himself played down the problem after the Denver game, describing the foot as tender after he tripped over Nuggets forward Bryce Hopkins' foot, and relaying the medical staff's assessment that it should be nothing serious. Still, questionable is questionable, and with the Warriors already short on forward options, head coach Steve Kerr faces a genuine selection dilemma: risk his rookie in Minneapolis, or hold him back with Friday's home game against the Lakers in mind.
To understand why Wednesday matters so much, start with the two players at the centre of it. Edwards, the former first overall pick, has grown into one of the NBA's great box-office draws, a high-flying guard whose scoring explosions regularly lead the nightly highlights. His 47 points against Cleveland were a season high, and his 33.3-point average through four games underlines how central he is to everything Minnesota does. Last season the Timberwolves lost to the San Antonio Spurs in the second round of the playoffs, and this season was supposed to be about taking the next step. Losing Edwards for up to two months would test that ambition to its limit.
Lendeborg's story is altogether different, and in some ways even more remarkable. He is the oldest player selected in the first round of the 2026 NBA draft, born on September 30, 2002, and his route to the league was anything but conventional. He did not start playing organised basketball seriously until he was around 18, poor grades kept him off his high school team, and he began his college career at Arizona Western College before starring at UAB, where he was twice named the American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year. He then transferred to Michigan, where he was named Big Ten Player of the Year and a consensus first-team All-American while helping the Wolverines win the national championship. The Warriors selected him with the 11th overall pick, and he was also the most valuable player of the summer league, leading Golden State to the title in Las Vegas.
That long apprenticeship is precisely why Kerr has trusted him so quickly. Before the season, Kerr called Lendeborg one of the team's best players already and said he was going to play a ton, and when asked whether Lendeborg was the most pro-ready rookie he had coached, Kerr answered that he was, one hundred percent. Lendeborg has repaid that faith in spectacular fashion. His 87 points across his first four games are the most by a Warriors rookie in his first four games since Wilt Chamberlain in 1959, and his 31-point, 12-rebound, six-assist performance against Denver matched a Kevin Durant-era benchmark for all-round production. In the lottery era, only four rookies have ever totalled at least 85 points and 35 rebounds in their first four games: Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal, and now Lendeborg.
The Anthony Edwards surgery news changes Minnesota's season in an instant. Arthroscopic knee surgery is typically a clean-up procedure rather than a reconstruction, but a recovery stretching to two months would cost Edwards roughly a quarter of the regular season, and the Timberwolves cannot simply replace 33 points a night. The players expected to step up tell the story of a roster in transition. Jaden McDaniels ranks second on the team with 15.0 points per game early in the season, while LaMelo Ball, acquired in the offseason to pair with Edwards in the backcourt, is averaging 14.8 points and a team-high 6.3 assists. Third-year guard Terrence Shannon Jr., averaging 13 points per game off the bench, has earned praise from coaches and teammates for his contributions.
Timberwolves coach Chris Finch recently praised Shannon's growth in glowing terms. There is no doubt about it, there has been great growth there, Finch said. His contain, his routes, he is not fouling, he used to be a high-foul guy. The only missing piece for him right now is rebounding at a little bit better level, and that would be exactly what this lineup needs. That kind of internal improvement will now be tested like never before, because without Edwards, Minnesota's offence loses its gravitational pull: the defender who bends entire defences out of shape and creates open looks for everyone else.
There is also a psychological dimension. The Timberwolves have spent the early weeks of the season trying to build momentum after last season's second-round exit, and a long Edwards absence risks turning a promising start into a holding operation. On the other hand, adversity has a way of accelerating development. McDaniels, Ball and Shannon will get the touches, the minutes and the late-game responsibility that would otherwise have gone to Edwards, and if they grow into those roles, Minnesota could return a deeper, more versatile team when its star returns. The next two months will answer that question, one way or the other.
The reaction to Lendeborg's emergence has been as loud as the numbers themselves. Stephen Curry, who was the last Warriors rookie to post at least 30 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in a game, back in 2010 when Lendeborg was eight years old, called the rookie kind of the full package after the Denver game. He has just got composure and feel, obviously his size on the court, he is a matchup problem, Curry said. But he is never really in a hurry and he is starting to see the pictures really well. Distributing, being aggressive, getting to the free throw line, offensive rebounds.
Draymond Green was equally struck, saying Lendeborg is able to impose his will on the game, and adding that he does not care what age you are, it is the NBA. Kerr, meanwhile, has described Lendeborg's impact as extremely rare, and added that he thinks the rookie is going to get a lot better too. Green had earlier noted on his podcast that players like Lendeborg and Jimmy Butler see the floor so well that when you want them to have tunnel vision and go score, they sometimes focus more on passing opportunities, a nice problem for a coach to have.
Lendeborg himself has taken the attention in his stride. Asked after the Denver game whether he was surprising himself, he answered absolutely, especially this game, adding that he had 13 free throws, which he called crazy and absurd for him. In an earlier interview he summed up his attitude in a line that has already become a favourite among Warriors fans: he is 24, in the NBA, with the best job in the world, having just moved his mother out to California, and living the dream. I am always gonna be myself, man, he said. I do not care what anybody has to say about it. That self-belief, forged through junior college, UAB and Michigan, is now carrying him through the brightest spotlight of his life.
On the Minnesota side, the tone is necessarily more sober. The reports of Edwards' surgery have been framed as a blow the Timberwolves must absorb, and Finch's praise for Shannon reads, in hindsight, like a coach already preparing his bench for bigger roles. There has been no suggestion that Edwards' injury is career-threatening, and arthroscopic procedures are routine in modern sport, but the sheer length of the possible absence, up to two months, is what gives the news its weight. For a team with championship ambitions, losing its best player for that long is a test of depth, coaching and character all at once.
Wednesday's game matters because it is a snapshot of two franchises at very different moments. Golden State started the season with three consecutive losses before Monday's breakthrough in Denver, where Curry delivered a perfect shooting night, making all eight of his field-goal attempts for 24 points, only the second perfect shooting night of his legendary career. The Warriors entered that game as seven-point underdogs against a rested Nuggets team at home, in danger of falling into an early-season spiral, and instead controlled the action for much of the night. Lendeborg's emergence is the reason Kerr remains optimistic despite the slow start, and the chemistry between Lendeborg and Brandin Podziemski, who scored 18 points in Denver, is one of the early stories of the season.
Minnesota, by contrast, now faces the prospect of proving it is more than one player. The Timberwolves' supporting cast is talented, but Edwards is the player who makes the whole machine work, and two months without him will expose every weakness in the roster. If McDaniels, Ball and Shannon rise to the challenge, the Timberwolves will emerge stronger; if they do not, the gap to the Western Conference elite could widen before Christmas. Either way, the next few weeks will tell us a great deal about where this team really stands.
There is also a broader lesson in the contrast between the two injury stories. Lendeborg's foot problem, by his own account and the medical staff's, should be nothing crazy, a minor scare for a player who already survived one in preseason, when he turned his left ankle against the Lakers in Las Vegas, left for the locker room, and then returned to finish with 17 points. Edwards' knee, on the other hand, requires surgery, with all the uncertainty that entails. One is a day-to-day question; the other is a season-shaping event. That they collide on the same night, in the same game, is what makes Wednesday unmissable.
The immediate next step is Wednesday's injury report and the pre-game announcements from both camps. If Lendeborg is cleared, he will start against a Timberwolves frontcourt that will be desperate to slow him down, and the Podziemski-Lendeborg combination will get another chance to build on its Denver promise. If he is held out, Georges Niang could be thrust into a starting role, with the Warriors already short on forward options, and Golden State will lean even harder on Curry, Green and Podziemski. Either way, the Warriors' other absentees remain significant: Jimmy Butler, Moses Moody and Kristaps Porzingis are all out, leaving Kerr with a thin rotation at exactly the wrong time.
For Minnesota, the next step is confirmation of the surgery plan and a timetable, followed by the practical work of reshaping the rotation around McDaniels, Ball and Shannon. Watch for how Finch distributes Edwards' shots: does Ball become the primary creator, does McDaniels take on a bigger scoring role, and does Shannon's bench production translate to starter's minutes? The answers will shape not just Wednesday's result but the Timberwolves' entire autumn.
Beyond Wednesday, the calendar is unforgiving. After Minnesota, the Warriors return home to play the Lakers on Friday night at Chase Center, a marquee fixture in which Lendeborg's fitness will again be central. The Timberwolves, meanwhile, begin the long grind of life without Edwards, with every game a test of whether their depth is real. And for Lendeborg, the Rookie of the Year race, in which he is now a top candidate, will be shaped by how quickly he returns and whether he can sustain a start that has already put him alongside Chamberlain, Ewing, Robinson and O'Neal in the record books.
Related coverage on US News Pulse: Stephen Curry's perfect night powers Warriors past Nuggets 134-114 for first win and Cavaliers rally past Timberwolves 127-125 in overtime as Mitchell outduels Edwards' 47.
Multiple reports on Tuesday said Edwards will undergo arthroscopic surgery on his right knee and could miss up to two months. That timetable is based on reporting, not yet a confirmed team announcement, so it should be treated as the current expectation rather than a fixed return date.
Lendeborg is listed as questionable for Wednesday's game at Minnesota with left foot inflammation. He described the foot as tender after tripping over an opponent's foot in Denver, and the medical staff reportedly told him it should be nothing serious, but his status will be decided closer to tip-off.
In his fourth NBA game, Lendeborg scored 31 points with 12 rebounds and six assists in Golden State's 134-114 win over the Denver Nuggets on Monday, the Warriors' first victory of the season. His 87 points across four games are the most by a Warriors rookie since Wilt Chamberlain in 1959.
Jaden McDaniels, who averages 15.0 points per game, LaMelo Ball, who averages 14.8 points and a team-high 6.3 assists, and bench guard Terrence Shannon Jr., who averages 13 points per game, are the players expected to carry a bigger load while Edwards recovers.
After Wednesday's game at Target Center, Golden State returns home to host the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night at Chase Center. Lendeborg's fitness, and the availability of Butler, Moody and Porzingis, will again shape Steve Kerr's rotation.
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