The best player from the 2020 NBA Draft was supposed to be a settled question, and this week ESPN's analytics side unsettled it by making the case for Tyrese Haliburton over Anthony Edwards. Not as a hot take. As a math argument, from the corner of the network that built its reputation on efficiency, possessions and the four factors rather than highlight reels.
That's the part that makes it interesting. Anybody can say a name. When the argument comes dressed in numbers, you have to actually sit with it.
Is Tyrese Haliburton better than Anthony Edwards?
Start with where they came from, because the gap is the whole story. Edwards went first overall to Minnesota in 2020, the kind of pick a franchise builds a decade of marketing around. Haliburton went twelfth, to Sacramento, and then got traded before his second full season in the deal that sent Domantas Sabonis the other way. A No. 1 pick and a guy his first team decided it could live without.
Edwards' resume is the loud one. A leading scorer who has carried Minnesota deep into two straight conference finals, one of the league's premier volume three-point shooters, Olympic gold in Paris. He is the rare wing who can create his own shot at high volume and still get a defensive stop when the building needs one.
Haliburton's resume is the quiet one that shows up in the spreadsheets. Historically clean assist-to-turnover numbers, All-Star selections, a Pacers offense that ran at his pace and turned into one of the most efficient in the league because he almost never gave the ball back to the other team. Then 2025, when he tied Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals at Madison Square Garden with a three and flashed the Reggie Miller choke sign at the New York crowd, and carried Indiana all the way to a Game 7 in Oklahoma City before his Achilles gave out in the first quarter.
checked the almanac: in 1996 allen iverson went first and kobe bryant went thirteenth, and it took most of a decade before anybody argued about the order. drafts get graded late.
What the 2020 NBA Draft class actually produced
This class has aged better than anyone said it would on draft night, when the consensus was that it was thin. Look at where the value actually landed:
| Pick | Player | Drafted by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anthony Edwards | Minnesota |
| 3 | LaMelo Ball | Charlotte |
| 12 | Tyrese Haliburton | Sacramento |
| 21 | Tyrese Maxey | Philadelphia |
| 30 | Desmond Bane | Memphis (via Boston) |
Two All-Star lead guards after the eleventh pick. A Rookie of the Year at three. A thirtieth pick who became a starting NBA shooting guard. That's a tell about how little anyone knew in November 2020, and it is exactly why the top of the lottery is not the same thing as the top of the class.
Where the argument goes next
Here is the honest complication, and the reason this debate is live rather than decided: Haliburton's last chapter ended with an Achilles injury in the biggest game of his life, and an Achilles rehab does not hand anything back on a schedule. Edwards, meanwhile, has never had that kind of interruption. Availability is a skill, and the analytics case has to survive it.
So the argument is really about what you are measuring. Edwards is the better bet to give you 30 in a playoff game where nothing else is working. Haliburton is the better bet to make four teammates look like the best versions of themselves for 40 minutes. Both of those are the answer to somebody's question.
What I'm watching next is simple and human: whether Haliburton's game comes back with the same pace and the same fearlessness in the last two minutes, because the numbers that built his case were pace-and-decision numbers, not athleticism numbers. If that part returns intact, this stops being a provocative argument and becomes a coin flip. If it doesn't, the No. 1 pick keeps the belt and everybody nods like they knew all along.
I don't think anybody knew all along. That's what makes drafts worth arguing about six years later.