The NBA All-Star Weekend has a way of turning the league’s biggest names into kids again, one moment you’re chasing a trophy under arena lights, the next you’re jawing with a former President like it’s a pickup run at the rec.
In Los Angeles, with Barack Obama in the building, Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards found himself in the kind of courtside exchange that instantly felt destined for group chats. Obama, speaking with coach J.B. Bickerstaff in a lighthearted pregame moment, cracked that he’d “wore [Edwards] out” when they matched up the day before. Edwards didn’t let the joke breathe for long. He jumped in to correct the record
“Nah, he didn’t wear me out,” before delivering the line that became the punchline of the weekend: “He did aight for an old man.”
“He did aight for an old man” 💀
-Ant talking trash to former President Obama 🤣
(via @NBA) pic.twitter.com/NwXPVN10ZK
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) February 19, 2026
It was classic Edwards: confident without being cruel, competitive without being mean-spirited, the same edge that shows up in his game showing up in his personality. And that’s why it landed. Obama can handle a rib, he started it, after all, and Edwards treated the moment like basketball culture treats everything else: if you’re in the arena, you’re in the mix.
The funniest part is that the trash talk didn’t float off on its own. Edwards backed the swagger with a weekend that ended in hardware, earning All-Star MVP honors. In a setting built to entertain, he managed to do both, deliver a soundbite and deliver a performance, then walked away having “won” a tiny, silly, perfectly modern All-Star subplot: Anthony Edwards vs. Barack Obama, score one for the player.
