The FIBA Basketball World Cup’s first round is in the books, and several of the Timberwolves players participating with their national team have moved on to the second round. It’s no surprise that Anthony Edwards and Nickeil Alexander-Walker advanced easily with their respective teams. Team USA and Team Canada are favorites to win the tournament because of how stacked they are with NBA stars and role players. That gives them a strong advantage in roster depth and athleticism that few other teams in the tournament can compete with.
However, Karl-Anthony Towns and the Dominican Republic national team has looked like they might be able to compete with the two tournament powerhouses after their stellar play in the first round. They just went 3-0 in the first round and advanced with ease. The Dominican Republic came into the tournament ranked as the 23rd best national team by the FIBA World Rankings, making them the second highest ranked team in Group A behind Italy, who is currently ranked 10th.
Therefore, the Dominican Republic was favored to make it out of the first round before the tournament started, even before they added KAT to their roster. However, upsetting Italy was a big win, and their Day 1 win against the hosting Philippines may have been even bigger. 38,115 people attended that game, a record for a FIBA game. Many of those fans booed Karl every time he got the ball at the beginning of the game. For reference, that’s about twice as many people as can fit into Target center, and perhaps twice the home-court advantage.
The Dominican Republic team has been on the rise. They’ve had a ton of success during the World Cup qualifiers, going 9-3 in a strong group where two of their losses were to Team Canada. If you want to know more about the players who helped the Dominican Republic qualify for the World Cup, I previously wrote an article about a few of the team’s core members.
My hope was that adding KAT, an All-NBA center and elite 3-level scorer, to an already strong roster would take the Dominican Republic team to a new level. It could potentially make them a dark horse candidate to win the tournament. I’m excited to say that so far, that is exactly what has happened.
Towns has been dominant thus far in the tournament. In the first game against the Philippines, Karl played with force, putting up a double-double with 26 points and 10 rebounds including three offensive boards. He didn’t have an efficient night from the field, shooting just 5 of 16. However, Towns still made a huge impact on offense by driving into the paint and drawing fouls. He shot a total of 16 free throws, and converted those opportunities at the line into 15 points with only one miss.
Often when a player goes to the line that many times, it’s because the opposing team can’t guard them cleanly, and they have to foul to stop them. That’s how this game felt. The Philippines had no one who could truly stop Towns. As a result, they hacked him a lot. It’s important for a lead scorer to be able to get to the free-throw line on a bad shooting night. KAT made a point to keep playing aggressively downhill to get there. His nonstop effort helped the Dominican Republic get a slim victory in a tough game.
In the second game against Italy, KAT had his best game of the first round, scoring 24 points while shooting 4 of 9 from 3-point range, grabbing 11 rebounds, and dishing out five assists. Towns showed off his signature skill as a seven-footer, hitting several of his threes from well beyond the arc, forcing the defense to guard him tight on the perimeter. It also opened up many opportunities for KAT to drive and kick, because the defense would often bring a double team to guard him. That left a window of opportunity open for Towns to find an open teammate on the perimeter.
KAT did a great job at recognizing these opportunities, and regularly used his gravity to shift the defense. That meaningfully helped the Dominican Republic’s spacing and ball movement, and the team hit 41% of their threes while assisting each other on 22 of their 29 made baskets. KAT personally assisted on three of Andres Feliz’s seven three-pointers, helping him match Town’s team-high of 24 points in the game. The Dominican Republic team has several good perimeter shooters, so KAT’s ability to help get them open, along with his own scoring ability, was a key factor in their upset over Italy.
In the third game against Angola, KAT only played 15 minutes, partially because he got into some early foul trouble, and partially because FIBA’s rules are kind of weird. Towns picked up two personal fouls early on in the game, and he was awarded a technical shortly thereafter. FIBA only allows for five total fouls before a player fouls out of the game, and one technical foul can count toward that foul-out total. For comparison, in the NBA players get six fouls, and technicals don’t count towards the total. That effectively limited KAT’s play for much of the game. He had to hit the bench and play safe to not foul out early.
However, Towns still made a big impact in his shortened minutes, scoring eight points on 50% shooting from the field, while also helping the team’s defense with two blocks and several altered shots or drives. When his team needed him at the end of the game, KAT delivered. He played almost the entire quarter while locking in on defense, drawing 4 fouls on offense in an ironic form of payback. Additionally, that he was still able to play his own game in the fourth without fouling out, even though he had four fouls before the quarter started, shows that he locked in and played disciplined down the stretch.
That’s exactly the type of play we hoped to see from KAT in the first round of the tournament. Towns isn’t putting up Luka Doncic‘s ridiculous one-man-show scoring numbers, Doncic was averaging 35.5 points through his first two games. But KAT has still been one of the best players in the tournament. He’s a walking mismatch, and he has been able to use that to his advantage in different ways in all three of the games. He can drive into the paint and score or draw a foul most of the time. KAT also recognizes when he has open teammates on the perimeter he can kick it to. And he can be that person on the perimeter who can hit a three with ease when the ball rotates to him. KAT has been a massive help in the Dominican Republic’s success in the World Cup thus far.
The Dominican Republic team has plenty of good players. However, Karl has been a No. 1 option who can put up points and use his gravity to draw attention away from the rest of the team. Every good team needs that kind of player to bring themselves to the next level. Karl has been a natural fit with his team, too. They have several good shooters and dynamic wings who can benefit greatly from the space he creates and cash in the open looks Towns provides them. Without his presence, the Dominican Republic likely wouldn’t have won their game against Italy or the Philippines, and at the very least would have had a much tougher match.
The second round of the World Cup will be another opportunity for KAT to impose his will on the court and draw some more attention to this talented Dominican Republic squad. The next round will be tougher. Their group will consist of Italy and the top two teams from Group B. However, if they can make it out of the second round, they will be just inches away from qualifying for the Olympics for the first time in the team’s history, because seven teams from the World Cup qualify for next year’s summer Olympics.
