As you’ve probably heard by now, the Timberwolves will be without star center Karl-Anthony Towns for the next two games.
If you haven’t heard, well, I’m a little confused where you’ve been and why you don’t have your push notifications turned on. Towns, along with 76ers center Joel Embiid, will each be suspended for two games from Wednesday night’s scuffle.
That puts Towns out for Saturday night’s contest against the Wizards in Washington DC and Monday night’s game against the Bucks at Target Center.
The team held its first practice since Wednesday on Friday in DC (with a special guest appearance from Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing). Timberwolves coach Ryan Saunders spoke a little on Wednesday night before looking ahead.
“We accept what came out of that, but we will always continue to support our players and we support Karl,” Saunders said. “Getting through games, we have to continue to trust our system. Continue to get better. We need other guys to step up now.”
One of those players who will have to step up is Noah Vonleh. Vonleh has averaged 14.3 minutes per game off the bench this season. Regardless of if he gets the start or not in Towns' absence, Vonleh will have to play more minutes and will get more of an opportunity to show off the offensive skillset he showed last season in New York when he averaged 8.4 points per game.
“Guys got to step up and find different ways to score because that’s a big scoring load that we’re losing right there,” Vonleh said.
Vonleh also pointed out that while the Wizards aren’t exactly a dominant team, it is a team that went down to the wire against the Rockets on Wednesday night. And without Towns, this will be a pretty even matchup.
In totally unrelated news, this is a big trip for forward Jake Layman. Layman attended Maryland and still has plenty of friends in the area. He anticipates there will be about 20 people in attendance to watch him play.
Layman is another guy who could step up offensively. He’s averaging 8.5 points off the bench this season and hit the 20-point mark four times last season.