Karl-Anthony Towns Timberwolves Post-Mortem

For almost all of you, this will not matter.  This is the end of an era type deal though for me as a Timberwolves fan.

Karl-Anthony Towns was taken #1 overall in the 2015 NBA Draft, out of Kentucky.  He was to form a young core with last year's number 1 pick, Andrew Wiggins, who the Wolves acquired in a trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers to send them perennial All-Star and All NBA forward, Kevin Love.  

3 days before the October 28th season opener, the Timberwolves coach and General Manager (GM) Flip Saunders died.  

This season was immediately thrown into chaos.  Flip was a huge proponent of KAT and pushed to pick him first overall.  He had build relationships with Wiggins and the other younger players on the team, and was a respected coach in the league, and now he was replaced by longtime assistant coach, and former player, Sam Mitchell.  The front office replaced Flip with Milt Newton.  Both would be replaced by Tom Thibodeau the next season.

That 2015-2016 season was not great.  The team finished 29-53, but Towns started to show something that you normally didn't see from 7 foot tall players: some accuracy from 3.  He shot 34% on low volume, but the seeds were planted.  He won Rookie of the Year this season.

In 2016-2017, under the gruff leadership of Thibs, the Wolves finished 31-51.  Towns shot 36% from 3 on higher volume than the season before (3.4/game versus 1.1/game in 15-16).  

2017-2018 was The Jump.  The Wolves traded Zach Lavine and Kris Dunn to the Chicago Bulls to acquire Jimmy Butler.  Jimmy was a Thibs guy, when Thibs coached in Chicago.  Tough and edgy, Butler helped lead the Wolves to their first playoff appearance since 2004.  KAT made his first All Star game and won his first All-NBA award.  All-NBA is a season-end award that picked 3 teams of players from the entire league.  At this time, there were only 3 center slots available.  He landed in 3rd Team All NBA, with Joel Embiid (2nd team) and Anthony Davis (1st Team) finishing ahead of him at his position.  This award was well earned!  He nearly broke the 50/40/90 threshold, which is a shooting threshold that is hard to accomplish.  It stands for 50%+ from the field (all shots during live play, all your 2point and 3 point attempts), 40%+ from 3, and 90%+ from the free throw line.  It's a mark that most centers don't approach.  Well, didn't.  The game has changed since then.  He shot 54/42/85, which are great numbers.  All that while pulling down 12 rebounds a game, which ranked 4th overall in the entire league.

Defense was his weak point.  He had flashes of athleticism in college that people hoped could have translated to the pros.  He was actually thought of more as a defender than a shooter coming out of college, but it just didn't happen with the way Thibodeau runs his defense.  KAT couldn't come up enough to slow an attacking offensive player down and then recover to guard the guy streaking towards the hoop.  It didn't help that the Wolves didn't field the staunchest defenders on the perimeter, besides Butler.  This would hold true for some time.

2018-2019, was the end of the honeymoon.  Butler played 10 games with the Wolves before being traded to the Philadelphia 76ers for a handful of players.  Butler had an infamous practice where he showed up a KAT and Wiggins and some other players, but mainly those two, by winning a scrimmage with a bunch of bench players on his team. He then went straight from that practice to an interview ith ESPN's Rachel Nichols, where he torched the team further.  The team's hand was forced, and the trade was made.  Later that season, Thibs was also canned, and replayed by Ryan Saunders, Flip's son, who had been an assistant for the team for a few years.  Scott Layden took over for Thibs in the front office as the lead decision maker.  Towns had another great offensive year, shooting 51/40/83, scoring 24 points a game and grabbing 12.4 rebounds a game, but he didn't make All NBA this season.  He lost out to Nikola Jokic (whom Towns had always played well against, and in the final game of the 17-18 season, the Wolves beat Jokic's Nuggets to secure the last playoff spot in the Western Conference), Joel Embiid, and future teammate, Rudy Gobert.

2019-2020.  Ryan Saunders lost the interim coach title and was the head coach for the season.  This was the COVID shortened season.  With Saunders coaching the team put together by new GM, Gersson Rosas, the Wolves went 19-45.  The Wolves finished bottom 10 in the 30 team league in both Offense and Defense.  They also traded away Andrew Wiggins at the trade deadline to the Golden State Warriors for streaky shooter D'Angelo Russell.  The Wolves also gave up their 2021 draft pick, which wound up being 7th overall, and the Warriors selected Johnathan Kuminga, an athletic wing.

Towns kept launching it from 3, and hit 51/40/80.  Another solid shooting season but things weren't translating to wins.  COVID hit in March, and the season ground to a halt.  Shortly before that though, a certain player made headlines by licking his hands and touching the interviewers microphones when basic distancing was put in place.  That player, why it was future teammate Rudy Gobert, who did not take COVID seriously at the start.  KAT then lost several family members in 2020 and 2021.  He caught COVID once during the 2020-2021 season and lost a bunch of weight.  COVID did not treat him well.

The 2020-21 season marked another 1st overall pick joining the Wolves, the charismatic and explosive Anthony Edwards.  KAT, now in his 6th season, took on a big brother role for ANT for the following 2 years, and Ant always speaks highly of KAT.  The Wolves finished this season 23-49, and fired Ryan Saunders 31 games into the season, replacing him with Toronto assistant coach, Chris Finch.  Throw this season in the trash, except for when Anthony Edwards completely evaporated Yuta Watanabe on a baseline dunk.

2021-2022.  Things are looking great.  Fans are able to come back to the arenas, people are getting COVID Boosters and a few weeks before training camp starts, the Wolves fire their general manager for sleeping with a coworker's wife/abusing his position of authority.  Sachan Gupta takes over, long time Vice-GM who is pretty savvy of an operator, and helped design everyone's favorite NBA past time: The Trade Machine.  The Wolves do GREAT under Finish, despite the early distraction with all the questions about Rosas.  They finish 46-36, making the playoffs for the 2nd time since 2004!  Towns makes 3rd Team All NBA again, shooting 53/41/82, and the Wolves actually finish in the top half of the league in defense (13th)!  This is because Towns was put in a scheme that actually suited his strengths.  

The team played a frenetic style of defense where everyone is moving around, including the Center.  Normally a "Drop" coverage will see the center hang back after pick and roll.  He "drops" back to cut off a potential drive, which means he leaves a cushion for the person with the ball potentially.  Towns often got caught in between in Drop, not quite going out to guard the ball handler, while still not going back far enough to cover the guy who set the pick and was now heading towards the basket.  Instead, they switched everything.  Towns was trusted to defend guards, and recover to the hoop when possible.  

This led to one of the drunkest playoff series I have ever seen.  The Wolves/Grizzlies series was such a chaotic series that the Wolves lost in 6 games, but could have swept the Grizzlies 4-0, or could have been swept themselves.  Two fairly young teams meant that there was reckless play everywhere and both teams would blow huge leads.  

I guess now is the time to bring up KAT's follies.  For all his amazing shooting talent, he has two other major flaws, besides the defense.  Well 3, and they're all related.  1) Turnovers. 2) Offensive Fouls.  and 3) complaining to the refs.  Towns is a very aggressive player when he has the ball, and sometimes this leads to him being reckless with the ball.  Usually this is the form of "I'm driving to the basket and I just push the defender", and other times he would get so focused in on what he was doing he wouldn't see the help defender come and strip the ball from him.  He would complain to the refs for perceived fouls, and complain when he got called for fouls too.  This led to a bit of a vicious cycle where he would get some terrible whistles.  Like... there are times he would get an offensive foul just because a smaller guy tried to guard him, and the same contact he would give to another center would move this smaller guy more.  Towns in the 2022 playoffs, in those 6 games, had 4.2 fouls per game.  If you hit 6 fouls you foul out of a given game, so averaging 4.2 fouls is pretty gross.  

Anyways, after two total playoff appearances, KAT has a bit of a reputation.  Sure he could put up stats in the regular season, but often they didn't lead to wins, and he definitely wasn't a playoff performer.  Narratives in sports are sticky, and this is how it would stay for him for some time.  

2022-2023, maybe finally KAT can have some actual roster stability and... nope.  4 important role players from the playoff team are traded for Rudy Gobert by new GM Tim Connally.  Then at the trade deadline, still streaky shooter and bad defender D'Angelo Russell is traded.  The team is upended again around KAT, and the trade is panned by the league, and is an indictment on KAT.  Gobert is a multiple time Defensive Player of the Year, so clearly the team doesn't trust him on defense.  The team is trying to make up for his shortcomings.  But the front office and Finch are confident in the Twin Towers lineup.  The team struggles, and the fit between KAT and Gobert looks awkward.

But it leads to another playoff berth!  For the first time in back to back years since, say it with me, 2004!  They get beat by the eventual champions, the Denver Nuggets in 5 games, but in that offseason, many of the Nuggets player say that the Wolves were the hardest out they had in the playoffs, and that each of those games was a fight.  KAT's year though was less than ideal.  He only played 29 games this season, due to a knee injury that kept him out for 53 games, and he returned for the playoffs, only to play poorly, which did not help the narrative around him.

Then 2023-2024 happened.  A year later, the Towns/Gobert pairing looks great!  Gobert holds down the defense while KAT's range stretches the offense and helps carry the team forward.  Gobert, more healthy this season than last, since he entered the season with a nagging back injury following playing for the French National Team, is back to being a defensive monster and eventually wins his 4th Defensive Player of the Year award.  Towns makes an All-Star team again, his 4th, and the team has the best defense in the league by a country mile.  They finish the season tied for 3rd in the Western Conference, and blow the doors off the much hyped Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs, sweeping them 4-0 in embarrassing fashion.  KAT drew the hard assignment of guarding future hall of famer, Kevin Durant for most of the series and held up pretty well.  You're not going to stop Durant, he's just too good.  They won their first playoff series since '04!  AND he was doing this coming off a mid-season knee surgery that he rushed back from!  His timeline would have taken him to the 2nd round (if the Wolves made it) at least, and he beat it by weeks.

In the second round, they faced defending champions the Denver Nuggets and took them to 7 games.  And ripped off the largest comback in playoff history in game 7 to advance to their first Western Conference Finals since... 2004.  

Look, that 2004 Kevin Garnett team was really **REALLY** good.

KAT was huge in the series against Denver.  He was able to hold his own against Jokic, which allowed Gobert to guard non-shooter Aaron Gordon.  Because of this, the defense was incredibly stingy and frustrated Jokic for most of the series, cutting off his passing lanes and making life tough on him.  Without Towns that series is way harder.

This is the highest point in KAT's career.  This is the point where all the narratives on him were starting to turn.

Then the Mavericks made light work of the Wolves in the Western Conference Finals in 5 games.  Towns shot the ball poorly and either through exhaustion or an emotional hangover, the team just fell apart, missing their chance to face the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals.  Some of the murmurs about KAT started back up but all in all it was a successful campaign.  And hey, he made it to the Conference Finals before Joel Embiid ever did!

So that's the story of KAT, who is now traded to the New York Knicks.  A man from New Jersey heading close to home to play for one of the most famous teams in the world.  The expectations are going to be outrageous on him because the pressure of *that* team, and *that* media market in *that* arena... I hope the lights aren't too bright.

Towns has been the best player I've gotten to watch regularly.  An anomoly who help change the shape of the league, yet is often mocked by other players and media personalities.  Deemed corny or fake when he tries to be serious, but is also too easy going for a lot of people.  He was right in the zone of "We want our athletes to be confident in their abilities and cocky, no not like that'.

He is a player whose surrounding team was always in flux.  The roster was barely stable, and he played with other players for, at most 2 years at a time it felt like, until Finch came along.  Then he got to build some continuity in his life... and then they traded a bunch of people for Gobert.  

I'll miss seeing him regualrly.  Yeah, Anthony Edwards is incredible and cool as shit, but there's something bonkers about watching a 7 foot guy just so casually shoot a 3 pointer, without leaving the ground, and watching it bottom every time.  

Happy trails KAT.