Karl-Anthony Towns is at a crossroads in his career. His latest playoff clunkers have put the Minnesota Timberwolves in a deep 0-2 hole against the Denver Nuggets. Towns is two games away from completing his eighth season in the NBA, he’ll be 28 in November, and he’s nearing the midway point of his career. What does he have to show for it? For a player who NBA GMs twice chose as the player they would want to start a team with, and for all the talk about his legacy and a “championship or bust” mentality in Minnesota, what has KAT accomplished?
The first overall pick in 2015, Towns has established himself as the second-best player in franchise history behind Kevin Garnett. Towns is second in Wolves history in points scored, rebounds, blocks, field goals, and turnovers. He has made more threes than anyone in a Timberwolves jersey. He won Rookie of the Year in 2016, he’s a three-time All-Star, and twice he was named third-team All-NBA. He’s the self-proclaimed “best shooting big man ever,” and has done just as much in the community as he’s done on the court in his eight years in Minnesota. And yet here he is, staring his future in the face. The only one who can decide his legacy is himself.
Karl-Anthony Towns plays as if the Joker was seven feet tall with a wet jumper. One moment he’s kicking Batman’s ass 1-on-1. In the next, he’s ramming a school bus into a bank and causing chaos everywhere he goes. For all the good Towns does on a basketball court, and all the stats he puts up, he is still making the same bone-head mistakes and low basketball IQ plays. It’s the stuff you’d expect out of a 21-year-old in his third season, not an eight-year vet in his third playoff run.
Towns will hit a huge three and follow it up with two bad turnovers and a back-breaking offensive foul. In Wednesday’s already must-win Game 2, Towns followed up his 5-15, 11-point, five-turnover Game 1 with an even worse 3-12, 10-point, five-turnover, five-foul meltdown. Towns has stellar career stats in the regular season: 23 points, 11.2 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1,7 turnovers, and 3.4 fouls per game with 53/40/84 shooting splits. However, they crumble away in the postseason. He averages 17.5 points, 11.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 3.7 turnovers, and 3.5 fouls per game on 45/36/81 shooting in 13 career playoff games.
If the Timberwolves lose in the first round, there will be rumblings this offseason about KAT’s future with the team. And for the first time, those rumblings might have real merit. He signed a four-year, super-max contract extension with the Wolves last offseason, and they can’t trade him until July 7th. Towns missed 52 games this year due to a calf injury, and he’s a year removed from his career-best season. But this seems like the last straw with Playoff KAT, especially with Anthony Edwards emerging as a special talent in Year 3.
Where KAT’s legacy goes from here is entirely up to him. He has the natural talent to be a pantheon player in the history of the game, where he places himself among the all-time greats. If basketball was just about shooting, passing, dribbling, size, and athleticism, Towns is every inch as good as Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan, and KG. But whatever it is holding him back, he’s careening toward the Glenn Robinson, Elton Brand, and Blake Griffin wing of pretty good not great number-one overall picks.
That may seem a bit harsh for a 27-year-old who is the anchor of the second-best era of Timberwolves basketball. Garnett didn’t get out of the first round until he was turning 28 in 2004. Ultimately, he had to face the music and request a trade to chase a ring with a super team in Boston. That may be true, but KG had established himself as one of the premier players in the league making six All-NBA teams (three of them first team), seven All-Star teams, and five All-Defensive teams. He had won an MVP by the time he got the Wolves out of the first round.
KAT may have to leave Minnesota eventually to rehab his image as a playoff performer. But it won’t be as KG left, a perennial MVP candidate who didn’t have the talent around him to make a run. KAT’s best path to reshape his legacy is to accept that he isn’t HIM and become his generation’s Chris Bosh. Bosh toiled away in Toronto for the first seven years of his career. He put up great numbers, racking up five All-Star selections and one second-team All-NBA nod. And he did it while playing in 11 playoff games in two postseason appearances with the Toronto Raptors. Bosh then hitched his wagon to fellow 2003 draftees LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in Miami, took a backseat, and rode all the way to two championships, four Finals appearances, five more All-Star selections, and NBA immortality.
It’s possible that could organically happen for Towns in Minnesota with Edwards ascending to greatness. Maybe Jaden McDaniels develops into a viable second option with Rudy Gobert and Mike Conley providing some veteran stability around the three stars. But the best way for KAT to find the glory he years for might be to form a super team in which he’s a very talented third wheel.
Eight years into his NBA career, Karl-Anthony Towns is facing a mid-career crisis. He has quite the dilemma for a player in his physical prime rocketing toward the second half of his career. Does he stay the course, constantly disappointing the basketball universe as the best player on a one-and-done playoff team? Or does he look in the mirror, acknowledge his faults, and lean into a secondary role with a championship in mind? His future and his legacy are in his own hands.
