Karl-Anthony Towns and Tyus Jones are 19 years old.
They can’t go into a bar. They can’t rent a car. Heck, they can't even supervise a driver with a permit.
Many 19 year olds are figuring out what to do for their freshman summer, maybe mowing the lawn for the nearby ballpark.
Towns and Jones are attending their first NBA practices. Same difference, right?
Just from reading the transcripts from the first Summer League practice, you would think the two were 10-year veterans in the NBA.
Towns talks about keeping his body right (when the idea of that for most teenagers is to eat as many Pizza Rolls as possible). He’s also already enrolled at classes this fall at Kentucky.
Jones is talking about building chemistry and learning how to master the NBA rule book.
They are saying all the right things.
Summer League head coach Ryan Saunders was asked if that type of maturity was unusual from a pair of 19 year olds fresh out of college.
“Yeah, I think it is,” Saunders said. “One year in college is definitely a shock for a lot of guys. We saw it last year with Andrew (Wiggins) and Zach (LaVine).”
This of course doesn’t mean the two are going to make it through the season without running into the rookie wall. Or feel out of place in a league with players twice their age. Or say something to the media that is taken out of context. These things happen and it would be weird if they didn’t.
After Wolves fans were able to see firsthand how close LaVine and Wiggins were, they will have that same opportunity with Towns and Jones. When Jones was selected 24th overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Towns shook his head and something along the lines that Jones wasn’t going home to play for the Wolves. Reporters told Towns, however, that a trade went down and Jones would indeed be a member of the Wolves. Towns, half-smiling, giggled, not sure whether or not to believe them.
That’s about as awkward as it has gotten between Towns and Jones. The two have kept in contact since the draft. Jones gave Towns a tour of the skyway (very easy to get lost in) and the two have been texting every day.
“The chemistry is built already. We’re very tight already,” Towns said. “… When you have a player like Tyus Jones, instantly chemistry is made. You just have to build off of it and we’ve done a great job of understanding each other’s attributes.”
The Wolves look to be building something similar to what the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder have built. Players like Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green have grown together. Ditto for Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka and James Harden (what could have been?).
President of Basketball Operations Flip Saunders made that clear last season when drafting LaVine and acquiring Wiggins. He added on to that by trading for Adreian Payne. Let’s not forget the team already had young players like Ricky Rubio, Shabazz Muhammad and Gorgui Dieng. The vision was for the Wolves to start in the draft and grow together, hopefully into something special.
Add in Towns and Jones, and well, it’s too soon to call a team coming off of 16 wins an embarrassment of riches, but that seems to be the trajectory here.
Towns and Jones will be learning on the run, but they’ll also have players who have been through this just a season before.
“It’s going to be ups and downs, you know?” LaVine said. “I was just in their position. We all go through it when we come out early. It was just going through the same thing, thinking what they were doing when they were going through it today. I saw it in their eyes today.”
What LaVine might have seen was two players who have been itching to get on the court. For the last two months, Towns and Jones have been working out. Working against chairs. Getting shots up. Talking with agents. Trying to predict where they would go in the Draft.
Now here we are, a few days before the two face off in their first NBA action. Yes, it’s Summer League, not considered the most competitive league, but it’s competition nonetheless.
“It’ll be good. Very valuable just because, I mean… by competing you have nothing to do but to get better,” Jones said. “Get used to the NBA, get used to the rules, the basketball. Different things like that. Anytime you can play and compete, it’s going to help you out.”
Those are all things that Towns and Jones will have adjust to. There’s the 24-second shot clock. There’s the three-second violation (both offensively and defensively). And though it might sound funny, yes, the ball is different. Imagine if you were a writer and someone threw a new keyboard on your desk, it would take some time to adjust to.
(Although, a basketball is probably harder to adjust to. I don’t want to make any statements that wind up like this.)
It takes work and some intelligence to adjust to these things. It’s no mistake that Towns nearly had a 4.0 at GPA and Jones was named to the All-ACC Academic Team.
“These guys definitely add to our basketball intelligence,” the younger Saunders said. “KAT and Tyus, they don’t have to be told twice on where to be. And they actually don’t need to be told once a lot of times.”
No, the two aren’t mind readers but they are very intelligent basketball players, especially given their ages. Towns might be the best pick-and-roll defending rookie not named Willie Cauley-Stein there is in the NBA and Jones is constantly praised for his basketball IQ and his ability to run the pick and roll. He might not be the biggest or most athletic guy, but Jones has proven that he can excel at every level he’s at. There’s no sense in doubting him now. He’ll also enable the Wolves to put LaVine more at shooting guard, his more natural position.
It’s very early in their careers, but it isn’t too early to tell why the Wolves drafted these two players. Both are extremely talented and equally important, both are very smart basketball players.