Minnesota Timberwolves: Can Karl-Anthony Towns win MVP?

After the Minnesota Timberwolves first season in the playoffs in 14 years, the ceiling will get higher for the Wolves franchise and its players.

The obvious move that will help keep the Minnesota Timberwolves on a positive trajectory would be to have another playoff appearance this season. But for the players to improve, there could be an Most Valuable Player award involved, specifically to one of their All-Stars.

While most NBA fans and analysts know that Jimmy Butler is the glue to the Timberwolves success, the player with the highest ceiling is arguably Karl-Anthony Towns.

This 22-year-old has the potential to make headlines this year and blow up every statistical category if he can improve on both ends of the ball – which he’s done each new year.

The 7-foot center that can shoot 3’s is starting to become a normalcy in the NBA, but not one that can also do anything else you want on the offensive end of the ball like Towns or Embiid do.

Whether it’s posting up, passing, or even handling the ball past the arc, Towns has been able to differentiate his game each year to a new level.

The most interesting player comparison would have to be Kevin Garnett due to both of them starting with Minnesota and the fact KG won an MVP with the Timberwolves.

In Garnett’s MVP season he averaged 24 points per game, 14 rebounds, and 5 assists, all while shooting 50 percent from the field. Garnett began his MVP season at the age of 26, so Towns has a few years before hitting that Garnett ceiling where people start making some actual comparisons.

Although, when Garnett was Towns current age, KG was accumulating the same statistics as Towns – albeit Towns’ 25 points per game season last year, which oddly enough Garnett never hit a mark like that in his entire career.

What would Towns have to do to win an MVP award? Most likely he’ll need to have a little bit of luck and a little bit of a mental push to increase his overall ability to help his team get wins. What Garnett did to help his team win more was increase his playmaking ability, which will be what Towns needs to do.

To do that, Butler and Teague may need to give up the ball more so Towns can play past the perimeter and make some plays near the basket – especially with having a 3-point specialist like Anthony Tolliver possibly coming in and out of at the power forward position, who can merely stand at the arc and wait for the baseline pass.

Overall, as long as the Timberwolves come together and push for their second straight playoff season, they’ll need the talents of their All-Stars in Jimmy Butler and Karl-Anthony Towns but one of them needs to have an MVP-like year to lead them any further in the playoffs than the first round – because losing in the first round isn’t necessarily a step in the right direction.

Thibodeau should go back to giving Towns more freedom and Towns himself has to be more aggressive, only shooting 11 shots a game isn’t what the Wolves need to succeed – like last season. If Towns doesn’t become more aggressive on both ends of the ball you can expect a very similar season to last year where the Wolves finished 8th in the Western Conference.

And not only that, another 8th seed could lead to a Jimmy Butler exit next summer, so someone needs to step up.