With his new adidas comedy series, Anthony Edwards is proving that his personality may be just as marketable as his game.
Anthony Edwards has always been funny. Not “athlete trying to be funny because somebody handed him a script” funny. Actually funny.
If you have followed the Minnesota Timberwolves star for any length of time, you already know. Sometimes the best part of an Anthony Edwards interview is watching the reporter try to maintain a straight face while Edwards says whatever happens to be on his mind. He has confidence, timing and just enough audacity to make you wonder what might come out of his mouth next.
Apparently, adidas noticed too.
The brand has taken everything people already love about Edwards off the basketball court and built an entire comedy series around it. It is called MINNATLANTASOTA, a mashup of Minnesota and Atlanta, the two places most closely connected to the Anthony Edwards story. Atlanta raised him. Minnesota made him an NBA superstar. Put the two together and you get a fictional world where Edwards gets to do what Edwards does best when he is not putting a basketball through a hoop: talk.
The series launched in September as part of adidas Basketball’s continuing partnership with Edwards and the rollout surrounding his AE 3 signature shoe. Rather than giving him another traditional sneaker commercial, adidas created an episodic sketch-comedy series built around his personality. New installments are expected to continue throughout the 2026–27 NBA season, with comedians, entertainers and other adidas athletes joining him along the way.
And if the first installment told us anything, nobody should expect Anthony Edwards to suddenly become polite for the cameras.
The setup feels like a late-night television show, complete with a desk, DJ, audience and monologue. Edwards sits comfortably in the middle of it all, delivering jokes and taking shots at some very familiar NBA names. LeBron James, Jaylen Brown, Jalen Brunson and LaMelo Ball all found themselves somewhere in the conversation.
The jokes work because Edwards has already spent years establishing this personality publicly. adidas isn’t introducing us to some newly manufactured version of Anthony Edwards. They’re simply putting better lighting around the Anthony Edwards we’ve already met.
That distinction matters.
There was a time when becoming the face of a major brand often meant an athlete had to become a little safer. A little more rehearsed. A little more corporate. Somebody handed you the approved talking points, you smiled for the camera, held up the shoe and told everybody how excited you were about the partnership.
That would probably be the quickest way to make Anthony Edwards less interesting.
Instead, adidas has done the opposite. The company has figured out that the thing worth protecting is the very thing another brand might have tried to polish away.
His personality.
Edwards summed up the concept rather perfectly when he said people had been telling him his commercials felt like television shows, so he went and made one.
And here we are.
There is also something smart happening underneath all the jokes. MINNATLANTASOTA isn’t simply another advertisement for a sneaker. adidas and Edwards are creating entertainment around the product, which means people may watch because they like Anthony Edwards even if they have no intention of buying basketball shoes that day.
That is where modern celebrity branding gets interesting.
The most valuable athletes in the world aren’t simply athletes anymore. They are personalities, media properties and, increasingly, entertainment companies unto themselves. Their audiences follow them from the game to Instagram, from sneakers to fashion, from podcasts to television and from sports into popular culture.
For Black athletes in particular, that evolution is worth paying attention to. For generations, the business model often meant somebody else owned the team, somebody else owned the network, somebody else controlled the endorsement and somebody else decided how much of an athlete’s personality the public was allowed to see.
That landscape is changing.
Today’s athlete can build an audience independently, partner with brands from a position of greater cultural power and turn what once might have been considered “too much personality” into an asset.
Edwards seems particularly suited for this moment because he doesn’t appear to be trying very hard to become a celebrity.
He just is one.
There is an ease to him that can’t really be focus-grouped. He can be wildly confident without seeming like he spent the morning practicing affirmations in the mirror. He can talk trash and somehow make the person being roasted laugh too. He can walk into a room with some of the biggest names in basketball and behave as though it never occurred to him that he wasn’t supposed to be the most interesting person there.
That kind of confidence can go left quickly if there isn’t charm behind it.
With Edwards, there usually is.
And Minnesota has had a front-row seat to all of it.
When the Timberwolves selected Edwards with the first overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, he was a 19-year-old prospect from Atlanta with enormous athletic ability and an equally noticeable personality. Six years later, he has become the face of the franchise and one of the NBA’s most recognizable stars.
Somewhere along the way, Minnesota and Atlanta both became part of his identity.
That’s why the name MINNATLANTASOTA is actually clever beyond simply being funny. It recognizes that Edwards doesn’t have to choose between where he came from and where he became a star. Both places belong to his story.
There is Atlanta in the swagger, the humor and the unmistakable Southern confidence.
Then there is Minnesota, the place where millions of people watched him grow up in public, where his jersey fills an arena and where “Ant” has become much bigger than a nickname.
MINNATLANTASOTA lets both worlds live in the same place.
It also arrives at an interesting point in Edwards’ career. At 25, he is young enough that we are still watching his public identity develop, but established enough that companies are no longer simply betting on his potential. They’re building around him.
And adidas appears to understand something important: you don’t have to turn Anthony Edwards into the next Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley or anybody else.
There has already been a Michael.
There has already been a Shaq.
There is definitely only one Charles Barkley.
Anthony Edwards gets to be Ant.
That may sound simple, but in an era when celebrity brands can become so carefully curated that everyone begins looking and sounding alike, authenticity has become remarkably valuable.
MINNATLANTASOTA works because the joke isn’t that Anthony Edwards suddenly thinks he’s a comedian.
The joke is that most of us already knew he was funny.
adidas just gave him a set.
So yes, Anthony Edwards can dunk. He can score. He can talk trash. He can sell sneakers. And now, apparently, he can host a comedy show too.
Welcome to MINNATLANTASOTA.
Just don’t be surprised if your favorite player catches a stray while you’re there.
