The preseason kicks off on Monday. While no Wolves team is exactly like another, this one had more roster continuity and a clearer understanding of its strengths and weaknesses than most. To preview the 2024-25 season for the Minnesota Timberwolves was essentially to ask two questions:
- Can they remain the best defense in basketball?
- Can they improve the offense?
If both questions were answered “yes,” then a championship was to be in their sights. We could conjecture about Mike Conley and even Rudy Gobert taking a slight step back with advancing age. For Ant and Jaden, maybe a step forward.
The one guy that had more uncertainty, however, is ironically the one who had been here the longest. Karl-Anthony Towns has been on a roller-coaster of ups and downs since…. well, for most of his career. Last season was generally good, even if his regular season was clunkier than the numbers and All-Star honors suggest. His postseason, for two rounds anyway, was excellent. To reframe the two questions above, a distilled season primer could go something like:
“Are the Wolves getting the KAT from the regular season, or the one we saw versus Phoenix and Denver?”
When those playoffs started, it was generally believed that the Wolves were probably not a real title contender because their offense never got in sync. After they demolished the Suns and then edged out the defending champs, however, they were looking for a moment like the best team in the playoffs. The question heading into the encore season here was which version we would be getting.
Then last night happened.
With the snap of the fingers, KAT’s done in Minnesota.
For some (myself included, for the most part) this is overdue. For many, this is a punch in the gut. Even if I disagree on the merits, I feel for the sizable contingent of Wolves Nation that remained attached to Karl. We cheer for players more than teams in pro sports, and he’s one of the best in Timberwolves history.
I have too many memories and thoughts about KAT to include in a WordPress post, but here are a bunch of them, in roughly career-chronological order.
June 25, 2015
Draft Night 2015 was one of the all-time hype moments in team history. Flip Saunders was BEAMING when facing the media to talk about his new number one pick, Karl-Anthony Towns. This was happening in step with the promising start to the post-Kevin Love rebuild (Wiggins, whatever his flaws, had just cruised to Rookie of the Year, while LaVine also started to show promise.) This team had been irrelevant for a full decade, and things had just taken an aggressive turn for the better. In his first Minnesota media appearances, KAT came off as “too good to be true.”
Rookie of the Year
KAT was a phenomenal rookie. From the start, his shooting was special. He shot more from the mid-range then, but the pure stroke was plain to see. The flurry of Flip Saunders’s franchise makeover moves (tragically, right before he died of cancer) had Kevin Garnett back in ‘Sota to finish his career and mentor Wiggins and Towns. KAT and KG were able to share the floor for several games, before Garnett’s knees started to wear down. That team was still way too young to seriously complete, but interim coach Sam Mitchell did a nice job of getting them reps and teaching them how to be professionals. Towns gave Wolves fans more than enough to feel great about, as he cruised to ROY honors. In Wolves history, KAT’s only competition for “best rookie” would be Stephon Marbury.
Thibs & Jimmy
I like to read, but I don’t like to read Shakespeare. It’s just weird shit, writing like that. But I often wish I had a handle on what makes something “Shakespearean” because it’s usually said about really compelling stories. Whenever people describe things that way, they sound smart. Well, I blew my own cover as far as not knowing if it applies to the time that Jimmy Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns were teammates playing for Tom Thibodeau. Maybe that was in some way Shakespearean. What I do know is that it was really exciting when Jimmy arrived. I know that Karl himself seemed really excited about it. I know he seemed maybe a little too excited, helping spark rumors that he and Jimmy were going to somehow acquire Kyrie Irving. (Eds note: Who departs in that scenario? I guess Andrew Wiggins doesn’t let things like that bother him.) Anyway, Jimmy arrived. Taj Gibson came, too. Thibs was intense.
Karl, for the first month or two of the season, played bad defense. He got yelled at, but he also got better. As the season moved along, the team hovered around the 3 seed. This was a bad time to have slight hopes of contending in the West, because there was no hope of contending in the West. The Chris Paul-James Harden Rockets were at their apex, as the Wolves eventually found out the hard way. The Warriors had their core that included Kevin Durant. But it was still very cool and new and refreshing to watch a good Timberwolves team. Jimmy tore his meniscus, they grinded out Game 82 versus Denver to make the playoffs, the Rockets series was a struggle, and the season ended. Jimmy apparently soured on the situation earlier than his official trade demand, but whatever exactly happened chronologically, shit got VERY UGLY right before Media Day 2018. Jimmy still had a season left on his deal, and Thibs was not gonna grant him his wish of a new NBA home. That being the case, Jimmy had to resort to misbehavior and crappy performance to finally force a Glen Taylor intervention. He moved onto Philly for one year, then Miami after that. He went on to have a great deal of success, leading the Heat to a pair of Finals appearances. Thibs, undoubtedly with KAT’s silent blessing, was canned by the Wolves and replaced by friendlier Ryan Saunders.
KAT and Jimmy will always be thought of as teammates who feuded, even if it was never exactly that way — at least not in public. (There was “the practice,” yes.) What it was was a severe clash of personality types and values. Jimmy respects humble origins and putting on a tough face when challenged. Karl wants positive energy. As human beings, based at least on what we know, few would prefer to have Butler around their life to Towns. As competitors and even maybe as teammates, Butler has the edge.
This didn’t work out, and it negatively shaped KAT’s career in a way that he never could’ve envisioned.
An Unexamined Detail
In Summer 2018, Karl’s max contract extension should have been a formality. He had a strangely difficult time finding a pen. Suddenly, a couple days after Jimmy Butler demanded a trade and blew his own Wolves future to bits and pieces, one appeared.
I don’t know if or how exactly KAT factored into the detonation of that situation. But that was… coincidental timing?
What about Wiggins and KAT?
There’s a certain school of thought that goes something like this:
Before the Butler trade, Wiggins and KAT were trending nicely toward becoming an All-Star duo. They closed the 2016-17 season (the first one coached by Thibs, before Jimmy arrived) scoring a ton of points per game each, with Wigs slashing and drawing fouls, and Karl scoring all sorts of ways. After the All-Star Break, KAT averaged 28.4 points on 59.7 percent shooting (!!!!!!!). Wigs was no slouch either, scoring 24.4 per game after the ASB. Much of that time was after LaVine tore his ACL, opening up a little bit more ball opportunity for each.
I have so many tweets decrying the lack of a coherent 2-man game between Wig and KAT, as they never quite clicked as teammates on the floor. Not that it matters necessarily, but they never seemed to bond as good friends off of it, either.
The Butler trade made sense when it was made, because we acquired a superstar player without giving one up in return, or even giving up any future first round picks in return. But the alternate universe where they continue investing in Wiggins and KAT is one I’ll always think about. That pairing was a foundation, for a couple seasons there, and we never got a satisfactory outcome with it.
The Ryan & Rosas Fiasco & Assigning Blame
Gersson Rosas assumed franchise power from Thibs. When operating on the inherited roster, Rosas opted for the machete over the scalpel. Out were viable veteran rotation players. In were cheap short-term replacements, and I suppose some added flexibility. (Eds note: Shoutout Jordan Bell.) Along with remaking the roster in a way that was bound to harm short-term success, the franchise messaging became overtly centered around KAT as the franchise cornerstone. A championship contender was going to be built around the unique talents of Karl-Anthony Towns.
There were multiple errors in thought and execution here. Letting Tyus Jones walk when he could’ve been retained for 4 cheap seasons. Trading up to draft Jarrett Culver. Then, as losing dragged on a bit, trading away Andrew Wiggins and a barely-protected and ultimately quite high draft pick, for the services of KAT’s supposedly good friend, D’Angelo Russell. In terms of the thought of KAT as a cornerstone, that can probably be forgiven as justified thinking — see above, about what he was doing with Wiggins, when they were on a slower-climb trajectory.
For his part, Karl embraced these changes, these moves, and this messaging, with open arms. He took a jab at Thibs in the press, saying that he was held back to “40 percent” of his potential, and looked forward to unlocking his full skillset playing under Saunders. At the first Rosas-Saunders Media Day, KAT spoke of being a guard, suggesting a major role change on the horizon and maybe some basketball-self delusion along with it. In the COVID-shortened season of 2019-20 — Saunders’s only “full” one as Wolves coach — Karl posted a career-high 26.5 points per game, on a team that won 19 games and lost 45.
More than anything what really harmed KAT in all this was the timing of the rebuild effort. He was just entering the prime of his career as his roster was torn apart, effectively precluding any real success in the short term. Allowing Glen’s preferred (or mandated, we’ll never know with certainty, I don’t think) hire of Saunders as coach did not help. We would see an immediate seriousness bump when he was replaced by Finch, later on. But to have Karl go from “guy you’d choose first to build a team around” to a big-time loser of games for consecutive seasons, all while Jimmy was parading deep into the playoffs with Philly and Miami, was a pretty shitty thing to have happen. Karl was being told, very publicly, that he was the most important part of the team and a generational talent. Meanwhile, the roster’s crappiness was tying a hand behind his back while he went out and tried to play like one.
Of course, there was one big silver lining to the Rosas approach…
Anthony Edwards Steals the Show
The 2020 draft class was supposed to be a bad one, so when the Wolves won the lottery the reaction was sort of a collective “LOL of course we win it this year.”
Some credit where it’s due to Gersson Rosas for drafting Anthony Edwards with that pick, and not James Wiseman or LaMelo Ball. With Ant, the Wolves suddenly had a future star player. The first year, playing in front of no fans during the pandemic, this wasn’t entirely clear, but there was undoubtedly early promise. By Year 2, however, after Finch had a chance to work with Edwards down the stretch of the rookie year, there was a sense that they had something real in their new shooting guard.
A question would become how Towns might adjust to sharing the spotlight with a co-star, or – gasp – surrendering it to Edwards altogether.
To his credit, Towns handled this exceptionally well. I think one time he made a snarky comment about Ant’s poor eating habits, but otherwise that teammate relationship was just great. Their playoff pressers were a riot, with Edwards charming the crowd, and bringing out a playful side of Towns that was finally getting to shine in a bigtime winning spotlight.
As many have been discussing in the past couple weeks, leading up to his upcoming season, however, the two had frustrated viewers with a noticeable lack of on-court “two-man game” chemistry. Was this Finch’s fault for not designing the right sets? Was in Ant’s fault? KAT’s? We’ll never know.
Twin Towers: A Two-Year Experiment
Tim Connelly took Rosas’s job, and then made the most controversial trade in modern league history. He traded away a million picks for Rudy Gobert, a great player but one who played the same position as KAT.
It took a while to be serviceable, but by their second year together, Karl and Rudy formed a frontline that was elite enough on defense and mediocre enough on offense to win a lot more than they lost. Throughout the regular season, Karl continued to seem a bit too eager to attack and rack up numbers, and not willing enough to just stay out of the way and space the floor. He made the All-Star Team, barely, and that seemed to please him a great deal. It wasn’t until he tore his meniscus and returned just in time for the playoffs, however, that his natural role on this star-studded and Rudy-clogged team really settled in. Versus Phoenix in the Round 1 sweep, and again versus Denver in the Round 2 shocker, Karl played his role to perfection. He expended more effort guarding star players (both Durant and Jokic!), and on offense he stayed out of the way and shot rhythm jumpers. In Round 3 versus Dallas, his shooting touch left him, for reasons unknown. But even with those struggles, it’s fair to say that Karl did a great deal to reshape his perception as a playoff performer, which until that point was not too good.
Would Karl have kept that same energy, after a full recovery from the knee surgery and a drop in importance from playoffs to the 82-game grind? Personally I doubt it, but it’s impossible to know. By making this trade, Connelly is implicitly betting on some level of regression to the Towns we watched for the last two regular seasons, as opposed to building off the humbler offensive player and defense-focused player we saw beating up on the Suns and Nuggets.
The trade makes sense for the Wolves on a few different levels. They shed long-term salary. They get two players back for one, while moving on from the mostly-clunky Twin Towers fit. They add a lights-out wing shooter who can take the minutes that Joe Ingles and Terrence Shannon Junior otherwise might’ve fought for. Assuming the Pistons don’t suck for three more years in a row, the Wolves will get their first round pick, mitigating some of the continued Rudy-trade debt. The trade probably frees up Chris Finch to be more of an offensive-side-of-the-floor basketball coach, and less of a manager of egos. Towns liked to hold the ball as much as Ant does. That didn’t lend itself to movement. It is quite possible that the Wolves will have a better team next year than they had this year, because their defense will remain elite and their offensive flow will improve significantly.
We’ll have to wait and see.
Legacy
As a starting point, Towns leaves the Wolves as its second most accomplished player, behind KG. He’s won Rookie of the Year, he’s made 4 All-Star Teams, he’s made 2 All-NBA Teams, he’s made 4 playoff appearances, and helped lead a conference finals run. He’s the best scorer in franchise history (Ant is coming for him tho), and possibly the best shooter, too.
When Ant’s time is done here, he’ll probably bump past Karl to #2 on the “Greatest Wolves” list, if he hasn’t already, but KAT’s very high, either way.
We’ll remember the early excitement and promise. We’ll remember the “teacher’s pet” persona that always tried a little too hard, but mostly in harmless ways with good intentions. Similar to his eagerness to please off the court, he usually tried a little too hard on it – plowing into defenders, and jumping for blocked shots. But the good inside him as a person made the off-court stuff a non issue, and the good inside him as a player made the ill-focused energy more than offset by consistently huge production.
Karl was imperfect, but he was also very good and sometimes flatout great. The circumstances around him were ever-changing, and most recently they too often left us wondering if he was still a good fit.
Knicks fans will like him, even as he sometimes drives them nuts.
KAT’s gonna play for Thibs again.
Shakespeare couldn’t write anything this good.