If you’re a Minnesota Timberwolves fan or just someone who follows Anthony Edwards closely, you might’ve seen a change in his free-throw routine, and the reason behind it is Mark Cuban. The Dallas Mavericks’ minority owner, in the offseason, called out the officials for letting Edwards get away with stepping over the line while taking free throws. This didn’t sit right with the guard, who called him out recently.

However, Cuban held nothing against the Timberwolves superstar. “This has nothing to do with Ant. It was the fact that @NBAOfficial s chose not to make an easy call,” he wrote on X, explaining the rationale behind his previous statement. “That’s the issue. It’s not Adam Silver telling them what to call or not. They just decide themselves.”

“I brought it up to the head of officials when we played the twolves in the playoffs 2 years ago. When Ant hit game winning FTs against us, and obviously stepped over the line. The people in charge of the refs ignored it. They also ignored it in the L2M report. (Something they do a lot of ) But if you speak about it on NBA podcasts, that changes their behavior,” Cuban further elaborated.

The Mavericks’ minority owner then continued ranting about how his appeals have been falling on deaf ears, but somehow, this statement that he gave on a podcast seems to prompt them to make a change. Moreover, Mark Cuban also stated that these decisions, such as the one telling Edwards to adjust his free-throw routine, aren’t even coming from the top.

Instead, he believes that this is just the officials’ preference rather than an organized decision. Well, officiating has been a huge grey area for the league in recent times, with several controversies emerging every now and then. While Adam Silver and the rest of the NBA executives have been making changes to ensure the game remains as fair as possible, that’s not been the case.

Now, this situation involving Anthony Edwards further sheds more light on this topic. Nonetheless, while the league figures out a way to deal with these officiating mishaps, Edwards is slowly but surely adjusting to his new routine, as he hopes to keep his consistency alive from the free-throw line for the remainder of the season and his career as well.

Anthony Edwards is “getting used to” his new free-throw routine

Well, even though Mark Cuban has suggested he meant no harm to Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards, unfortunately, he has inflicted some damage. After his most recent matchup against the Celtics, where he revealed that it was Cuban who caused this change in his routine in the first place, he also mentioned how he’s not letting that affect his efficiency from the line.

“I started working on it over the summer, trying to get used to it,” Edwards stated. “… After [Cuban] did what he did this summer, a bunch of dudes was texting me like, ‘Bro you gotta change this ’cause they gonna start doing it.’ Coach [Tom] Crean texted me about it. So, I was like, I just gotta change my free throw routine.”

The Ant-Man claimed that he has been taking around 200 free throws every day in the gym to help him get used to his new routine. He then went on to emphasize that this is the reason why he’s been able to make the change quite easily without affecting his numbers on the court, which is quite true, actually. This season, Anthony Edwards is shooting 82.3 percent of his free throws.

While this is lower than what he shot from the line during the 2024-25 season, which was 83.7 percent, his free-throw percentage hasn’t taken a significant toll. In fact, there’s a chance that he might even improve his stats by the end of this campaign. So, it’s not something that the guard will lose sleep over, as he focuses on leading his team to another deep playoff run.