Wolf Gang
A few weeks ago a couple homies and myself fired up the ol’ NBA 2K machine, and the evening’s most dramatic battle saw the Minnesota Timberwolves visit the Boston Celtics. I’m the guy that will gladly pick the League Pass team of the moment, even if there are no out-and-out stars on its roster. I’ll get hammered for it because I won’t have one of the league’s ten best scorers in my starting lineup — but sometimes a supposedly second-tier superstar will vindicate this abstract approach to gaming. Karl-Anthony Towns did whatever the hell I needed him to that night. He caught boards, he shot 3s, and best of all he charged into the lane like a freakin’ bull. He threw down on my guy’s defense like the Death Star on a placid planet.
Too many teams stand in the way of basketball fans getting to see this Final in real life, but so far these playoffs Towns has ridiculed the notion that he’s only really ‘video-game nice’. It’s been sweet to have playoffs, period, with fans in the stands and players not in and out of health and safety protocols. The basketball moves ferociously in the postseason, which leads to errors or inspires unfathomable greatness, and reminds me a lot of what it’s like to see your favourite band live: everybody onstage rushing to get the hell out of there, strung out on adrenaline, and then what once-in-a-lifetime things all that urgency and adrenaline do to the music. You might never hear a version of ‘You Can’t Quit Me Baby’ quite like the Queens of the Stone Age performance at the Brixton Academy in 2005; and you might never see a Towns performance quite like the one he’s finally serving up, in their series so far against the Memphis Grizzlies.
Unless, of course, the Timberwolves actually intend to grace the 2022 NBA Finals.
Honestly it’s been an honour to watch so much playoff hoops this Easter weekend, all of it laced with such potential narrative consequence for the league. What happens to the Utah Jazz, and that Donovan Mitchell contract, if they don’t get over the hump this year? Which Brooklyn Nets, the billing or the show, are we getting Sunday afternoon in Boston? What the hell do the Los Angeles Clippers do now? But spare a swoon for the Timberwolves of Minnesota, for the small-market team that’s had to watch all of Kevin Garnett, Kevin Love, Zach LaVine, Jimmy Butler, and Andrew Wiggins move on to seemingly and actually better things. Karl-Anthony Towns has heard the world call Joel Embiid the best scoring center in the league for at least two seasons now; no doubt picked his jaw off the floor too, every time Nikola Jokić has revolutionised the no-look pass; and witnessed Giannis Antetokounmpo become the most dominant player in the known universe. Who would’ve thought that all one of the most vaunted big men in the game wanted, needed, was speedy transition basketball? If this is a game of attrition, Towns, within it, offers an attritional reward for watching his game.
The very best centers in basketball, modern-day and historic, do things they really shouldn’t be able to at their size. Last night Towns seized the initiative, and didn’t appear to sweat the dangers of contact a whole bunch. He kept himself perfectly vertical when he went up for offensive rebounds. He chose his battles when he went for defensive ones, and a quite relentless Wolves rotation enabled him to live with his choices. But the most remarkable thing about Towns wasn’t so much his outside shooting, or even the highly sharable moment he threw down on Jaren Jackson Jr. What you love watching a big man, who teams will make susceptible to poor bodily decisions, is the twinkle-toes: the delicate steps Towns made to protect the ball when double-teamed — without travelling, and without drawing the frankly unattractive fouls Embiid snacks on in between meals. The reluctance to cough up bad shots just because, hey, the video game updates suggest I can make them. Towns did a little bit of everything, with measured strength and with hustle whenever gravity had had enough. It doesn’t hurt one bit, of course, to have Anthony Edwards pulling up with buckets so purposeful they look like fastballs, or storming Memphis’ paint with the audacity to try and body three different defenders. I told my nephew no one in the modern NBA reminds me more of LeBron James, and what Edwards could become for this franchise absolutely excites me.
The Minnesota crowd knew the cost of Towns’ absence, even after scrapping together a messy win over the Clippers on Thursday night. Towns fouled out of the game, and merched up to watch the Timberwolves overcome a) a bashful shooting night for D’Angelo Russell, and b) another deposit for Paul George’s Hall of Fame ledger. Unfortunately that night will be remembered for Pat Beverly getting one over the Clippers franchise he helped rebuild, and his celebrations after doing so; not for what lessons these Timberwolves — an embarrassment of redemption stories — seem to learn and apply on the fly.
Securing three more wins against Ja Morant and the Grizzlies will be complicated, especially if the Wolves keep turning the ball over, and certainly if Memphis can figure out how to target Towns physically. But what a statement for playoff basketball game 1 was. Despite so much potential for aerial carnage — Morant, Edwards, and just every active Grizzly, let’s be honest — it was the particle physics of Karl Anthony Towns that swung the opening skirmish.
