On Thursday night, it was announced that Karl-Anthony Towns will make his second-straight All-Star appearance in Charlotte come mid-February.
It’s not exactly a surprise. Towns has been a consistent force for the Wolves and without him, it’s scary to think where this team would be. They certainly wouldn’t be knocking on the door of the playoffs.
It’s been a rocky season for the Wolves. A lot of things have changed. But something that has remained the same has been the excellence of Towns.
On the season, Towns is averaging 22.5 points, 12.1 rebounds, 3.1 assists, 1.9 blocks and 0.9 steals per game.
He’s expanded his game in his age 23 season. His defense is better than ever. His 1.9 blocks and 0.9 steals per contest are career highs, as are his 3.1 assists per game.
Every offseason, the great players in the league add something to their game. For Towns, it was his passing and his defense. Towns has become a fantastic passer out of double teams and has the ball handling skills to be a creator for this offense.
Defensively, Towns gets in more foul trouble than you’d like. Early in the game, he tends to make unnecessary aggressive fouls. But he’s been a much better defender, both team and individual, this season. The glimpses we saw in his time at Kentucky are coming to fruition.
Towns ranks 16thin the league in points per game, ninth in rebounds and ninth in blocks. The only other players to be in the top-16 in all three categories are Anthony Davis and Joel Embiid, two players who will also be in Charlotte.
Towns ranks eighth in the league with 33 double doubles. He’s also on pace to appear in every game of the season for the fourth-straight season. The dude has yet to miss a game in his career. That’s insane. Sometimes the best ability is availability. To compare him to other bigs, Davis has missed 11 games (21.1 percent of the season) while Embiid has missed four. Sometimes injuries are unavoidable, but it feels like players should be rewarded for being on the court.
Our Julian Andrews uncovered a crazy stat last week which explains just how special Towns is, and can be. If Towns can raise his shooting percentage up 0.2 percentage points by the end of the season and hold the rest of his averages, he’ll be the first player in league history to have averaged 20+ points, 10+ rebounds, 1.5 threes, 1.5 blocks while shooting 50 percent from the field in a season. That screams modern-day NBA and it feels like people aren’t paying enough attention to it.
If you think that’s an oddly specific stat, maybe it is. But it’s also describing what every team wants in a big man: someone who can score efficiently, stretch the floor, rebound and defend at a high level.
Timberwolves interim coach Ryan Saunders was asked after Wednesday’s game against the Grizzlies whether or not Towns is an All-Star.
“Absolutely,” Saunders said. “Absolutely.”
It’s really that simple. This is a player who has already accomplished so much in his young career. Towns hit the 6,000-point mark earlier this season. The only players to hit that mark faster than Towns’ 280 games was Shaquille O’Neal and Dwight Howard. Adding onto that, the last player to score 6,000 points and grab 3,000 rebounds in 280 games or less was Tim Duncan.
You don’t get in this company by accident.
In last year’s All-Star game, Towns suited up for Team Stephen and finished with 17 points and a team-high 10 rebounds off the bench while shooting an efficient 7-for-11 from the field in Los Angeles.
Towns joins Kevin Love and Kevin Garnett as the only Wolves to make more than one All-Star appearance.
You can watch Towns in the All-Star game on Sunday, Feb. 17. The game will air on TNT.
Rookie Josh Okogie will also represent the Wolves in the Rising Stars Challenge. That game will take place on Friday night.