The Timberwolves All-Star guard resumed offseason workouts with his player development coach, Chris Hines. Before they started a shooting drill once, Hines saw Edwards stretching. This was unusual.

“Ant, what the hell are you doing stretching before shooting? I’ve never seen you do that,” Hines said.

Edwards’ answer: “I saw LeBron doing it.”

The 23-year-old Edwards, who starts his fifth NBA season when the Wolves play LeBron James and the Lakers on Tuesday night, also wanted to talk to Hines about how he worked on his midrange shot, so he could incorporate some tips he picked up from Kevin Durant.

And “Ant” also adjusted part of his workout after watching how many shots Stephen Curry takes in his sessions.

“That’s what is trickling into what you’re going to see now,” Hines said.

Edwards had more than a little fun while he was with the Olympic team, which included James, Durant and Curry. His U.S. teammates certainly heard him say in their training camp he was the No. 1 option on a team full of Hall of Famers.

But they loved his energy and his confidence in saying it.

“That was the most unsurprising comment, knowing his personality,” Curry told the Minnesota Star Tribune in San Francisco.

Edwards again went viral for telling members of the U.S. women’s table tennis team in Paris he’d be able to score a point against them. Then he followed that by attending one of their matches. He won a gold medal and afterward had James teasing him for not being able to open a champagne bottle.

He got to play on the second unit alongside Durant for most of the Olympics. In a career highlight for Edwards, he caught a lob for a dunk from Durant in the gold medal game against France, and he was so pumped it appeared he forgot he had to go back and play defense.

“It was an exciting moment for both of us,” Durant told the Star Tribune in Phoenix. “That’s a connection. … It’s something that got people out their seats. I knew exactly how to throw the ball. Like our chemistry met — you see our chemistry in that moment.

“I miss being around Ant every day.”

That last sentence is a statement a young Edwards could only dream of hearing from the player he looked up to as a child. Edwards took advantage of the days he was around Durant and other greats of the game, as he’s entering a new phase of his career.

He is the unquestioned “No. 1 option” of the Wolves after the team traded Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks. After the team’s first Western Conference finals appearance since 2004, the next step for Edwards is learning how to win at a high level and to do it consistently. There was no better training ground for that than what he went through this summer.

“He feels it now,” Hines said. “He understands that competitiveness in the world. He’s seen it from LeBron and these guys. He’s seen how hard it is to win and how disciplined you got to be.”

Stealing from the greats

Edwards made no secret that he was watching and taking from the players he was around this summer. He’ll be making some adjustments to his pregame routine as a result.

“LeBron got like this little thing. I don’t want to put him out there, but he’s got this little thing that he do before every game, a great routine that I stole,” Edwards said. “I haven’t been able to like implement it yet because we haven’t played a game, but I told C. Hines about it. I definitely took that from Bron. I don’t know if he know, but he’s going to see this so now he know.”

James will get to see for himself Tuesday night in Los Angeles.

The arc of Edwards’ career has seen him go from the No. 1 overall pick in 2020 with a lot of question marks to a player who has improved every year and fulfilled a lot of the potential he had coming into the league. Things like developing winning habits — getting proper rest, treatment, diet — all came a little more slowly for Edwards.

But in Year 5, especially after seeing how his Team USA teammates treat their bodies, the importance of those improvements he can make on the margins is finally hitting home. When it came to tweaking his workouts, Olympic coach Steve Kerr said in San Francisco that postpractice sessions were when the players would talk shop.

“I saw a lot of it, just imitating moves,” said Kerr, who has coached Golden State to four NBA titles. “They had a lot of different games going on, whether it was one-on-one or their shooting games that they played. You can see the banter and the interaction during those games, and there was a lot of good conversation where guys shared tricks of the trade, that sort of thing.”

Edwards gravitated toward Durant the entire time he was there, and Durant loved having Edwards in his ear and competing against him in practice.

“I’m not trying to put him as a little bro, but it felt like that,” said Durant, 36 and entering his 17th NBA season. “When you wake up in the morning and your little bro got the most energy. That was Ant. It was a joy to be around him.”

In watching them interact, Kerr said “you could see the joy.”

“Kevin is a historian of the game,” Kerr said. “He knows the history of the NBA. He also knows the future of the NBA. He knows Ant is a huge part of that. He takes a lot of pride in helping to further the game and mentor a guy like Ant who’s only going to get better and better.”

What’s next

After the Mavericks eliminated the Wolves, Edwards said he wasn’t in shape to withstand playing about 100 games of regular-season and postseason basketball. But playing in the Olympics, he said, allowed him to enter this season in the “best shape of his life.”

That’s always a popular saying in training camp, regardless of the sport. But Hines said fans can expect “to see a different animal.” Not just because of the shape Edwards is in, but because of how he has learned to dissect the game.

“It’s going to come in waves,” Hines said. “I don’t think it’ll just be crazy scoring. It’d be waves of just how to win games.”

A more vocal Edwards has begun to emerge around the team in the past few seasons. He’s always chatty, but he has been using his voice in more of a leadership role that he has been previously reluctant to embrace. Edwards can deliver criticism or advice to teammates from time to time because he is typically hyping them up all other times. That helps his message get through.

“You’re seeing a kid trying to figure out how to lead, and his best way of doing it is if he’s feeling it himself — I gotta give them the fire that I have,” Hines said.

Edwards has always had a competitive fire, but he is learning how to channel it better. The Olympics helped with that, and the NBA is preparing him for what his next step will be.

“He can be as great as he wants to be,” Curry said. “Talent? Checks off. Competitiveness? Checks out. The work ethic? Checks off.”

Said Edwards: “A lot of guys have got a chance to be really great at this game, but maybe they just don’t believe it. Some guys put the work in and don’t believe it. Some guys believe it and don’t put the work in. So I believe it, and I put the work in.”