Karl-Anthony Towns trade rumors are inevitable after Timberwolves’ loss to Mavericks, but are they realistic?

Karl-Anthony Towns was an essential component of perhaps the single biggest victory in Minnesota Timberwolves history. Let’s be absolutely clear about that. Towns was the primary defender of Nikola Jokic as the Timberwolves stunned the defending champion Denver Nuggets to reach the 2024 Western Conference finals. The notion that this roster was built to beat the Nuggets, specifically, hinged as much on Towns as it did on Rudy Gobert and Anthony Edwards. The self-described greatest shooting big man in NBA history was an absolute necessity in keeping the Timberwolves’ offense viable against some of the biggest lineups in the league. Minnesota’s season would have ended weeks ago without him.

Weeks feel like years right now, because Karl-Anthony Towns was awful in the Western Conference Finals. The Dallas Mavericks posed a number of unsolvable matchup problems for Minnesota, but Towns wasn’t supposed to be one of them. No. He was supposed to feast on the smaller P.J. Washington and help Minnesota own the glass against a Mavericks team that hadn’t really been tested inside yet this postseason. Instead, well, you watched the games. Towns shot 33-of-87 in the Western Conference Finals. Minnesota lost his minutes by 16 points. Naz Reid closed Game 2 over him. He offered little defensively.

This is largely who Towns has been for his entire career, a star as talented as he is inconsistent. In the 2022 and 2023 playoffs, he scored 15 or fewer points in four of his 11 games, but 25 or more in five of the remaining seven. He has more playoff games with four or more fouls (18) than three or fewer (14). Minnesota has lost his minutes in 20 of his 32 playoff games. For most of NBA history, you just lived with this. Max-level talents were so rare and so valuable in their best moments that you gritted your teeth through their inconsistencies and blindly paid them at every opportunity. 

That isn’t the NBA we live in anymore. The 2023 CBA was designed to break up teams like the Timberwolves. As of this writing, Minnesota has roughly $193 million in committed…

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Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2024-05-31 03:23:53

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