Deep Dive: What Does Karl-Anthony Towns' Return Bring The Timberwolves?
The big man's return has been much awaited and brings many a new dimension to this Wolves team.
Every team in the Association is its own symphony. A harmony of rising and falling sounds, moving at their own unique rhythm. In his near season-long absence, Karl-Anthony Towns might have been surpassed as the Minnesota Timberwolves’ conductor by the younger and more ardent Anthony Edwards, but there is no doubting the orchestra is missing one of their biggest and boldest sounds. Without him, it’s still a cacophony of unexplained questions.
The timeline on Towns’ return to the court remains deeply murky, but until we hear otherwise it’s safe to assume that the three-time All-Star will step his enormous feet on the hardwood again this season. Perhaps the importance of that statement has been muddied by the team slipping and stumbling on shaky ground when Towns was healthier early in the season.
But this team misses Towns. Especially without D’Angelo Russell to insulate Edwards as a secondary scorer. For all of Towns’ warts — and there are a few that have forever protruded from the flesh of his game — it’s impossible to ignore his talent or the chasm he has left in Minnesota’s roster. Without him they aren’t whole, without him they’re a string section short of a symphony orchestra.
However, in Towns’ absence we’ve seen this team take on somewhat of a metamorphosis. Everything was hazy and hard to picture in the 21 games he played to begin the season, but since then the smog has lifted just enough to see the outline of how this funky roster experiment could work. They don’t have the same players in the rotation, their pecking order and game style have shifted, and Chris Finch and his coaching cohorts have found out who their main contributors are and what spots they work best in.
So when Towns does come back, whether it’s directly after the All-Star break or a handful of games after that or even in the very final stretch of the season, it’s easier to plop him into the mix without fracturing the team’s still-fragile identity that has been crafted over the past 40 Towns-less game nights. In fact, it’s a lot easier to see how his presence can actually give this team an immediate boost.
Profiting Off Roll Gravity
Already we’ve seen the difference in what Mike Conley’s relationship can do for Rudy Gobert. Since the steady-handed point guard joined the team, Gobert is averaging 15.3 points a night (up from 13.3 points per game for the season) and has already collected 10 points off Conley assists in three games compared to the 100 points he made off D’Angelo Russell assists in their 45 games together.
We know Conley can unlock Gobert. It’s a pretty big chunk of why he was brought in to steady this offensive ship. But that ability should lend its hand to Towns’ game as well. Simply put, Conley gets into the paint more than Russell. He is more athletic in terms of short-area burst and he has a more natural inclination to get closer toward the rim when making both his scoring and playmaking actions.
That means fewer clunky connections coming from the free throw line extended area for Gobert and more deep positions that allow Gobert to spring into space around the cup.
But, more importantly for Towns, it means leveraging that synergy with the towering Frenchman into long-range attempts for the league’s best shooting big man. Simply by coexisting in a more natural way with Gobert and his tendency to draw defenders toward him in rim-diving situations, Towns should find himself as the forgotten release valve far more often with Conley at the helm.
In a situation like this, Conley is able to drag defenders toward himself and his non-shooting roll-man for long enough to force the corner help to abandon their assignment in order to stop points in the paint. It doesn’t take any mental gymnastics to envision how this works with Gobert creating the roll gravity and Towns providing the finishing touches from deep.
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