Deep Dive: Make Life Easier And More Efficient For Karl-Anthony Towns
The Timberwolves need to scrap KAT post-ups and focus on maximizing his strengths.
For Karl-Anthony Towns, the back-to-back series against the Los Angeles Clippers was a grind. A dirty, messy, unfulfilling grind. The team’s insistence to build the offense from the block outward saw Towns jostling and bumping for low-post position almost every minute he was on the floor, a tactic that not only wore the big man down with no avail in the scoring column, but halted any kind of offensive flow the Timberwolves as a team mustered up throughout two brutal losses.
By hammering home the notion that Towns has to spend the majority of his offensive possessions as a back-to-the-basket bruiser, the Wolves allowed L.A. to form a crowd around Towns at all times and force Minnesota’s shooters — who haven’t produced enough evidence to be called that so far this season — to beat them from distance.
The Clippers were guarding Towns with a smaller defender (which we’ve seen on multiple occasions throughout the years) and asking Towns’ would-be big defender to provide weakside help as a shot-blocker or a double-team partner coming from the baseline to bum-rush Towns. It all came crashing to a violent end in the second game, when Minnesota scored a woeful 84 points on a night spent most of the evening looking to exploit the faux mismatch.
In both outings, but especially the second, Towns was denied the ability to even touch the ball. On the rare occasion that he did, he was swarmed by the angry Clippers beehive, forcing him to try and escape a straightjacket just to get a pass away. In the end, the 25-year-old ended up with just 11 field goal attempts. It’s the most blatant example, but this has been a problem all season long. Heck, it’s been an issue for Towns his entire career.
It’s fourth time in the first eight games of the season that he has failed to eclipse 15 shot attempts in a single game, hitting above 20 just once. For the most talented player on a team who sits 25th in offensive rating, something has to give. Towns has too much three-level scoring ability to be withering away in the post, slowly disintegrating as opposing coaches scheme him out of the game. The goal for Towns, like it is with any star-level player, should be fostering an offensive system that optimizes him and makes life easier for him.
Some of it is on Towns himself. He is unselfish to a fault, too willing to moonlight as a creator for others while ignoring the fact that he is one of the most talented scorers the league has to offer. Too willing to take a the ‘right play’ page out of the basketball textbook and not just read the room and react accordingly. No matter how commendable it is that he seeks out his teammates and wants to help them succeed offensively, that’s not helping the team.
While Anthony Edwards has all the leadership qualities, charisma and budding game to be the face of the franchise’s never-ending rebuild, Minnesota needs Towns to be the high-usage guy on the court. If he isn’t, the carousel of offensive shitshows will continue. Towns is a near 50-40-90 player who can get a jumper off whenever he wants and scorch defenders off the drive, but, at times, his focus seems to be fixated on throwing killer-blow passes and proving his mettle as a ruffian post presence.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Howls and Growls to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.