Anthony Edwards Age 2026: How Old Is Anthony Edwards?

Last updated: November 9, 2026 · By Nathan Cole

Anthony Edwards is 25 years old in 2026. He was born on August 5, 2001, in Atlanta, Georgia, which makes him 25 now and 26 on his next birthday, August 5, 2027. The Minnesota Timberwolves shooting guard — “Ant-Man” to fans — is in his seventh NBA season, and he has already packed a career’s worth of honours into it: four All-Star selections, an All-Star Game MVP award in 2026, two All-NBA Second Team nods, and an Olympic gold medal.

The age question matters more than usual right now, because Edwards’ season has just been interrupted. On October 26, 2026, he scored 47 points at Cleveland. Three days later he underwent arthroscopic surgery on his right knee at the Mayo Clinic, and ESPN’s Shams Charania reported he could miss up to two months. He had played only four games of the 2026-27 season, averaging 33.3 points per game. The injury is the first real pause in a career that has moved only upward since draft night in 2020.

This article answers the age question directly, then tells the full story behind it: the Atlanta childhood, the single season at Georgia, the No. 1 pick, the playoff runs, the 55-point night, the $244.6 million contract, and what the knee surgery means for a 25-year-old who was supposed to be entering his prime.

Anthony Edwards Quick Facts

How Old Is Anthony Edwards?

Anthony Edwards is 25 years old. He was born on August 5, 2001, in Atlanta, Georgia, and he turned 25 on August 5, 2026 — in the middle of the NBA off-season, between the Timberwolves’ playoff exit and the start of training camp. He turns 26 on August 5, 2027.

Some older profiles still list him as 24. Those pages were written before his August 2026 birthday and never updated, a common problem with young stars whose ages change every summer. The confusion is easy to settle: every live database — Sportradar, RealGM, Topps and StatMuse — lists his birth date as August 5, 2001, and his current age as 25. At 25, he is younger than most of the league’s established stars and older than the new wave behind him, which is exactly where a franchise player is supposed to be: old enough to have four All-Star selections, young enough that his best years are still ahead of him.

The number that matters more than 25 is seven. Edwards is in his seventh NBA season, having entered the league at 19 as the first overall pick in the 2020 draft. He has played 442 regular-season games and 52 playoff games. By the time he turns 26 next August, he will have spent more than a third of his life as a professional basketball player.

Growing Up in Atlanta

Edwards grew up in Atlanta, and his childhood was shaped by loss early. His mother, Yvette, and his grandmother, Shirley, both died in 2015, when Edwards was 14. He has spoken about that year as the one that made him: basketball stopped being a game and became the thing that held his life together. He was raised afterwards by his older brother and sister, and the family stayed in Atlanta, where he attended Holy Spirit Preparatory School.

He was a football player first. Edwards has said he was a talented running back as a child and only committed fully to basketball in his early teens. Once he did, the rise was fast. He reclassified from the high-school class of 2020 to the class of 2019, played his senior year at Holy Spirit Prep, and was named a McDonald’s All-American in 2019. By the time he graduated, every major college program in the country wanted him. He chose Georgia, the school in his home state, over Kentucky and Florida State — a decision that surprised the recruiting world and said something about how much home mattered to him.

One Season at Georgia

Edwards played a single season at the University of Georgia, 2019-20, and it was enough. He averaged 19.1 points per game as a freshman, led the Bulldogs in scoring, and was named SEC Rookie of the Year and Second-team All-SEC. Georgia finished 16-16 and missed the NCAA Tournament, but nobody was watching the team record. Scouts were watching the 18-year-old who could score from anywhere, defend the other team’s best guard, and jump out of the gym.

He declared for the 2020 NBA Draft after that one season. There was no debate about whether he was ready. The only debate was whether he would go first overall, and when draft night arrived on November 18, 2020, the Minnesota Timberwolves answered it: Edwards, first overall, ahead of James Wiseman and LaMelo Ball. He was 19 years and three months old.

The Rise: From Rookie to All-Star

Edwards’ rookie season, 2020-21, was played in empty arenas during the pandemic, and he still made it impossible to ignore him. He averaged 19.3 points per game, finished second in Rookie of the Year voting behind LaMelo Ball, and made the NBA All-Rookie First Team. The highlight came in February 2021, when he jumped over Toronto’s Yuta Watanabe for a dunk that won the season’s dunk-of-the-year conversation outright and announced him to the wider sports world.

The jump from promising to elite took two more seasons. In 2022-23, his third year, he made his first All-Star team, averaging 24.6 points per game and dragging a Timberwolves team through the play-in tournament into the playoffs. In 2023-24 he made the leap that separates stars from franchise players: 25.9 points per game, his first All-NBA Second Team selection, and a playoff run that took Minnesota to the Western Conference Finals for the first time in 20 years. By the summer of 2024 he was on the Olympic team in Paris, winning gold with Team USA. He turned 23 during the tournament.

The 2024 and 2025 Playoff Runs

Minnesota’s 2024 playoff run made Edwards a household name. The Timberwolves swept Phoenix in the first round, then beat the defending champion Denver Nuggets in seven games — Edwards scored 44 points in Game 4 of that series — before losing to Dallas in the Western Conference Finals. He averaged 27.6 points, 7.0 rebounds and 6.5 assists across 16 playoff games that spring, numbers no Timberwolves player had ever posted.

The 2025 run was just as loud. In the first round against the Lakers, Edwards scored 43 points with nine rebounds and six assists in a 116-113 Game 4 win on April 27, 2025, that put Minnesota up 3-1. In the second round against Golden State, he posted a playoff career-high 14 rebounds in Game 1 and a playoff career-high 12 assists in the Game 5 closeout on May 14, sending the Timberwolves to a second straight conference finals. Oklahoma City ended the run in five games, but not before Edwards put up 30 points, nine rebounds and six assists in just three quarters of a 143-101 Game 3 win on May 24 — the highest-scoring playoff game in franchise history. Across the 2025 playoffs he averaged 25.3 points, 7.8 rebounds and 5.5 assists in 15 games.

The 2025-26 Season: Career Highs and an All-Star MVP

The 2025-26 season was Edwards’ best as a scorer, even though it was cut short. He averaged 28.8 points per game across 61 games, with 5.0 rebounds and 3.7 assists, shooting 48.9 percent from the field and 39.9 percent from three. On November 30, 2025, he scored 32 points in a 125-112 win over San Antonio — his 102nd career 30-point game, a new Timberwolves franchise record. Two days later, on December 2, he scored a season-high 44 points in a 149-142 overtime win over New Orleans, pouring in 34 of them in the second half, including a driving layup with 2.3 seconds left in regulation that forced overtime.

The peak came on January 17, 2026, against San Antonio: a career-high 55 points on 19-of-33 shooting, including 9 of 16 from three-point range. It was the highest-scoring game of his career and one of the best shooting nights any Timberwolf has ever had. A month later, in February 2026, he was named the NBA All-Star Game MVP, winning the Kobe Bryant Trophy — the first Timberwolves player to take the honour. The 2026 playoffs, though, were a step back: ten games, 21.6 points per game, and a hyperextended left knee with a bone bruise suffered in Game 4 against Denver. The right knee, the one that would end his 2026-27 season before it started, had been troubling him since last season.

The scoring column tells the story of the whole career: 19.3 as a rookie, then 21.3, 24.6, 25.9, 27.6, 28.8 — a step up every single season, six years running. The 61 games in 2025-26 matter for another reason: the NBA’s 65-game minimum for All-NBA honours. Edwards fell four games short, which cost him an All-NBA selection and pushed his eligibility for a supermax extension back to 2027.

The Knee Injury That Stopped the 2026-27 Season

The 2026-27 season began the way the last one ended — with Edwards scoring at a rate nobody in the league could match. In four games he averaged 33.3 points, and on October 26, 2026, he dropped 47 points at Cleveland. Then the knee gave out. An MRI showed new damage to his right knee, and on October 29, 2026, he underwent an arthroscopic debridement at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported he could miss up to two months.

RotoWire’s review of recent NBA injury history put the timeline in context: among 11 comparable arthroscopic knee procedures on All-Stars between 2017 and 2025, Edwards, at 25, is younger than any player in the sample. That youth cuts both ways — younger knees heal faster, but the procedure still means missing roughly a quarter of the season, and the Timberwolves will have to survive November and December without their best player. The encouraging detail is the other knee: the left knee hyperextended in the 2026 playoffs healed without surgery, and the right knee procedure was a cleanup, not a reconstruction. Edwards is expected back before the All-Star break, with his 26th birthday falling in the middle of his recovery.

Contract, Salary and Net Worth

Edwards’ money is simple to explain and hard to overstate. In July 2023, at 21 years old, he signed a five-year designated rookie maximum extension worth $244,623,120, fully guaranteed, running through the 2028-29 season. The deal averages $48.9 million a year and can reach roughly $260 million if he hits its escalators, such as an All-NBA selection. His salary rises every season: $42.2 million in 2024-25, $45.6 million in 2025-26, $48.9 million this season, $52.3 million in 2027-28, and $55.7 million in the final year. Through the end of the 2025-26 season he had already earned $132 million in NBA salary alone, per Celebrity Net Worth’s Spotrac-based accounting — and that was before the two biggest cheques of the deal arrive.

His net worth is where the sources split. Most 2026 trackers — including ClutchPoints and the outlets that cite it — list $40 million. Celebrity Net Worth’s own page lists $80 million, updated in 2026 to reflect the All-Star Game MVP season and the endorsement income that came with it. The honest answer is the range: $40 million to $80 million, anchored on the $40 million majority figure. Either way, the direction is one way. He is 25, under contract through his 27th birthday at nearly $49 million a year, and eligible for a supermax extension worth around $300 million in 2027. Readers who want the money story in full can read our separate breakdown of Anthony Edwards’ net worth in 2026.

The Road to the 4 Million Deal

The contract that defines Edwards’ fortune was signed before he had played a single All-Star-level season at its full value. In July 2023, at 21 years old, Edwards agreed to a five-year designated rookie maximum extension worth $244,623,120, fully guaranteed. The structure is the standard rookie-max design: the deal starts at 25 percent of the salary cap and rises 8 percent a year, which is why his pay climbs from $42.2 million in 2024-25 to $55.7 million in 2028-29. The escalators are the interesting part. If Edwards makes an All-NBA team, the deal can reach roughly $260 million — the difference between a very good contract and a franchise-defining one, decided by a media vote.

Before the extension, there was the rookie deal: four years, $44,271,137, the standard contract for a first overall pick under the collective bargaining agreement. Edwards earned $9.8 million as a rookie in 2020-21, $10.3 million in his second season, $10.7 million in his third, and $13.5 million in his fourth. Those four seasons, plus the first two years of the extension, put his career salary at $132 million through the end of 2025-26. The next three seasons pay him $157 million more. By the time the contract expires, just before his 28th birthday, he will have earned $288.9 million in NBA salary alone — and that is before the supermax.

The supermax is the number hanging over everything. A designated veteran extension, worth around $300 million over five years, becomes available if Edwards makes an All-NBA team. The 65-game rule is the obstacle: he played 61 games in 2025-26 and will play fewer this season because of the knee. That pushes eligibility to 2027, when he will be 26 and, if healthy, coming off a full season. The Timberwolves have every reason to offer it — he is their franchise, their ticket seller, and the player their last two conference-finals runs were built on. The only question is whether he stays healthy enough to earn it.

Endorsements and the Adidas Deal

Off the court, Edwards is one of the most marketable young athletes in American sports, and Adidas is the centre of it. He signed with Adidas as a rookie in 2020, and in November 2023 the brand launched his first signature shoe, the AE1, which sold out fast. A second signature shoe, the AE2, followed in 2025. In 2024 he signed a new multiyear Adidas agreement reportedly worth $50 million, with The Athletic’s Shams Charania reporting the deal pays him eight figures a year. Celebrity Net Worth puts his off-court endorsement income at about $20 million for the 2025-26 season alone, and Forbes estimated his total income in 2025 at roughly $62 million, salary included.

The rest of the portfolio reads like a list of brands that want the youngest audience in sports: Sprite, Bose, Call of Duty, Chipotle — he was the first NBA player to sign a major deal with the chain — Fanatics, Gatorade, Panini, AT&T, Hisense, and Prada campaigns. He runs his business interests through AE5 Enterprises, the company he operates with his business partner Justin Holland, and in 2026 he added a new line to the résumé: a docuseries, Serious Business, on Amazon Prime Video. At 25, the endorsement income is already a second salary. By 28, if the supermax lands, it will be a footnote.

Personal Life

Edwards keeps his private life quieter than his game, but the broad strokes are public. He is a father: his daughter, Aislynn, was born in 2024, and he has spoken about how fatherhood changed his approach to the season — less nightlife, more routine, more reason to take care of his body. He still lives in the offseason in Atlanta, where he grew up, and he has kept his closest circle small: family, his brother, and the business partner Justin Holland, with whom he runs AE5 Enterprises and a joint foundation.

His nickname tells its own story. “Ant-Man” started as a play on his initials and his size relative to the giants he dunks on, and it stuck because it fits: a 6-foot-4 guard who plays like he is 6-foot-8. The Marvel comparison followed him into a cameo-style role in the basketball world, and Adidas leaned into it with the AE1’s design. At 25, the personal story is still mostly unwritten — a young father, a franchise player, a brand — and the next chapter depends on the knee.

How Anthony Edwards’ Age Compares to Other NBA Stars

Age 25 puts Edwards in the middle of the league’s young-star class — older than the newest phenoms, younger than the established MVPs. The comparison shows how much runway he still has: most of the players in this table reached their first championship or MVP season at 26 or older, which means Edwards’ window is only just opening.

The table also shows the opportunity. Doncic was 25 when he reached his first NBA Finals. Tatum was 24 at his first Finals and 26 when he won a title. Gilgeous-Alexander was 26 when he won MVP in 2025. Edwards, at 25, has two conference-finals appearances already — more deep playoff experience than any of them had at his age — and a contract that keeps him in Minnesota through 2029. The question is not whether he is old enough. It is whether his body, starting with the right knee, lets him use the years he has.

The Game: What Makes Edwards Different at 25

Watch Edwards for one quarter and the age stops mattering. He is 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, built like a football player, and he plays above the rim in a way that makes arenas gasp. The dunk over Yuta Watanabe in February 2021 is still the play people show strangers. But the dunks are the least interesting part of his game now. What changed between his rookie year and his 25-year-old season is the shooting. Edwards went from a 32.9 percent three-point shooter as a rookie to 39.9 percent in 2025-26, and in 2024-25 he made 320 three-pointers — the most in the entire NBA that season. A player who attacks the rim like Edwards and shoots like that from distance is almost impossible to guard, because defences have to choose which problem to live with.

He is also a better defender than his reputation suggests. At his best, Edwards guards the other team’s best perimeter player, fights through screens, and uses his strength to switch onto bigger wings. He averaged 1.4 steals per game in 2025-26, and his playoff defence — the 14-rebound game against Golden State in May 2025, the way he hounded Devin Booker in the 2024 first-round sweep of Phoenix — is the part of his game that coaches talk about when the cameras are off. The scoring gets the highlights. The defence wins the series.

The last piece is the one you cannot measure: he wants the shot. In the fourth quarter of close games, Edwards demands the ball, and his teammates give it to him. The 44-point overtime win over New Orleans on December 2, 2025, is the cleanest example — 34 points after halftime, a driving layup with 2.3 seconds left to force overtime, and then the finish. At 25, he already has more 40-point playoff games than most players manage in a career, and he talks about the biggest moments the way veterans do: as if they belong to him.

The Timberwolves Without Their Star

The knee surgery does not just pause Edwards’ season. It tests the Timberwolves. Minnesota built its entire identity around a 25-year-old: the offence runs through him, the marketing runs through him, and the two conference-finals runs were his runs. With him out for up to two months, the load falls on the veterans around him — Rudy Gobert anchoring the defence, Julius Randle creating offence from the frontcourt, and Jaden McDaniels taking the toughest defensive assignment every night. The question for November and December is whether that group can hold a playoff position until Edwards returns, or whether the season slips into the play-in scramble Minnesota spent years escaping.

The schedule is unforgiving. The Western Conference has no soft weeks, and the Timberwolves opened the season with expectations of a top-four seed after two straight conference-finals appearances. A two-month absence for a player averaging 33.3 points a game is the kind of event that can cost a team home-court advantage in April. The encouraging precedent is the 2024-25 season, when Edwards missed games and the team stayed afloat on its defence. The worrying precedent is the offence: without him, Minnesota’s half-court scoring drops a level, and nobody else on the roster can create a shot the way he can.

There is also the contract clock. Edwards is signed through 2028-29, so there is no free-agency pressure. The pressure is different: the supermax. To qualify for a supermax extension worth around $300 million, Edwards needs an All-NBA selection, and All-NBA requires 65 games played. He played 61 last season. If the knee costs him two months, he will play roughly 55 to 60 games this season — short of the threshold again, which pushes supermax eligibility to 2027 at the earliest. The money will come eventually. The timing is what the injury changes.

What’s Next: The Road Back

The recovery plan is straightforward, and the history is on his side. An arthroscopic debridement is a cleanup procedure, not a reconstruction: the surgeon removes loose tissue and smooths the joint, and the rehab is measured in weeks, not months. RotoWire’s review of 11 comparable procedures on NBA All-Stars from 2017 to 2025 found that players typically returned within the reported timeline, and Edwards is younger than every player in that sample. The Timberwolves have said nothing that contradicts the up-to-two-months timeline, and the expectation inside the league is that he returns before the All-Star break in February 2027, with his 26th birthday falling in the middle of the recovery.

What he returns to is a team built for him and a league that has already decided what he is. Four All-Star selections by 25. An All-Star Game MVP. Two All-NBA Second Teams. An Olympic gold medal. A $244.6 million contract with a $300 million supermax on the horizon. The only thing missing is the one thing nobody can schedule: a Finals appearance. Edwards has been to two conference finals and lost both. The next step is not about age — at 25, time is the one thing he has plenty of. It is about health, and about whether the knee that stopped his season in October lets him finish what he started.

Sources & Reporting

This age profile was reported in November 2026 from the following named sources: Sportradar, Topps, RealGM and StatMuse (date of birth and age); Wikipedia and Land of Basketball (career history, season-by-season statistics and playoff detail, updated November 9, 2026); StatMuse (career averages and 2026-27 season line); RotoWire and ESPN’s Shams Charania (knee surgery, timeline and injury history); Spotrac via Celebrity Net Worth and NetWorthSpike (contract values and career salary); Celebrity Net Worth, ClutchPoints and NetWorthSpike (net worth estimates); and The Athletic via Shams Charania (Adidas deal terms). Where sources disagree on the net worth figure, this article publishes the range and explains why. Corrections can be sent via the contact page; this article will be updated if new reporting changes any figure.

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