It’s no secret that the Minnesota Timberwolves’ season has not gone according to plan. In the wake of the Kevin Love blockbuster trade, head coach and President of Basketball Operations Flip Saunders adamantly denied that the team was rebuilding. Rather, the Wolves were retooling.
Flash-forward six months. Three significantly-injured veterans and a disappointing 14 wins later, and the Timberwolves’ playoff pipe dream has crashed and burned. Minnesota is once again lottery bound, and in what will be another draft with elite top-four talents, the Wolves have a chance to acquire what will (hopefully) be the final piece of their young core.
Duke’s freshman center Jahlil Okafor has been the consensus top prospect for the 2015 NBA Draft by analysts and scouts alike for most of the season. Recently, however, Kentucky’s freshman big man Karl-Anthony Towns has made an extremely strong case for why he should be the No. 1 overall pick.
Okafor has an great low post game as you can see below. If he gets the ball on the block in single coverage, he’s probably going to score.
Impressive. But did you notice that Okafor caught the ball within three feet of the block on 21 of the 23 non-fastbreak scoring highlights? One knock on Okafor is that his game is one-dimensional. His effectiveness plummets when catching the ball off the block as you can see below.
Okafor seized control of being the No. 1 prospect due to his strong play coupled with Towns’ sluggish start to the season. Okafor’s play has been consistent throughout the year, while Towns didn’t really start dropping jaws until the end of January.
His slow start is possibly due to the platoon system Kentucky uses because of the ridiculous amount of talent and depth on its roster. John Calipari sends in five fresh players each time he subs, which limits minutes for everyone and probably hampered Towns’ ability to establish a rhythm early in the season.
Towns’ resurgence has been fueled by a fantastic month of February.
Towns posted a 72.7 true shooting % in all of February (8 games). Per 40 #s during that stretch: 20.9 PTS, 14.4 REBs, 3.4 BLKs & 2.8 ASTs.
— Mike Schmitz (@Mike_Schmitz) March 4, 2015
These numbers exemplify everything that sets Towns apart from the rest of the field. He can do it all. While Okafor has an NBA-ready low post game, he really doesn’t do much else other than rebound.
Towns can score from anywhere on the floor, is an above-average passer, and is an excellent defender. According to Basketball-Reference, Towns’ defensive rating this season is 76.2. This means that when Towns is on the floor, Kentucky’s opponents average a measly 76.2 points per 100 possessions. That’s ridiculously good. Okafor’s defensive rating is 95.2.
Okafor’s per-game averages blow Towns’ out of the water, but as Grantland’s Andrew Sharp points out, these stats don’t mean much due to the disparity in how many minutes each player plays per game due to Kentucky’s platoon system. Okafor is averaging 17.8 points, 9.4 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks per game while Towns is averaging 9.6 ppg, 6.5 rbg, and 2.3 bpg. However, Okafor (30.7) is averaging over 10 minutes per game more than Towns (20.5).
If you look at their averages per 40 minutes, Towns is on par with Okafor. Towns averages 18.8 ppg, 12.8 rpg, and 4.4 bpg while Okafor averages 23.1 ppg, 12.2 rpg, and 1.8 bpg.
I am not denying the fact that Okafor is an incredible talent. But the Timberwolves need Towns.
Mar 7, 2015; Lexington, KY, USA; Kentucky Wildcats forward Karl-Anthony Towns (12) shoots the ball against Florida Gators forward Dorian Finney-Smith (10) in the first half at Rupp Arena. Mandatory Credit: Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports
As I wrote a couple weeks ago in a piece on Gorgui Dieng, the Wolves haven’t had a rim protector since Kevin Garnett‘s first stint as a Timberwolf. Failed experiment after failed experiment has come and gone since then, most recently with Ronny Turiaf and Darko Milicic. Kevin Love never put in the effort to play defense when he was here, Nikola Pekovic can’t defend well, and Dieng has offered little to no hope that he will ever turn into the solid rim protector he seemed destined to be coming out of Louisville.
Last year’s Wolves team showed that it doesn’t matter how many points a team scores if it can’t prevent its opponent from scoring. Minnesota doesn’t need another big man that doesn’t defend. It has had dozens of them in the last 11 years and has never been successful. Towns can be that player that will force a stop in crunch time — he’s not merely a rim protector, he’s a pretty good on-ball defender as well.
Another area where Towns is superior to Okafor is in free throw shooting — an important skill for a big man. Towns is shooting 78.7% from the charity stripe vs. Okafor’s 52.5% mark.
One final reason that the Wolves need a player of Towns’ caliber is the fact that the dynamic of the NBA is changing. With great exception, most every successful team has at least two star players. Most people agree that Andrew Wiggins is going to be a perennial All-Star, but on the current roster, who is going to complement him and fill out Minnesota’s 1-2 punch?
While Ricky Rubio is a great talent and an important member of the Timberwolves, I don’t think he can be a championship-level team’s second best player.
Consider that Rubio has been playing professional basketball for ten years. He’s been getting the best possible coaching for a decade and he still can’t shoot very well. Say what you want about his work with Mike Penberthy, but now in his fourth season in the NBA, I still haven’t seen Rubio sustain a significant stretch of games where he shoots the ball efficiently.
Rubio is a great player, but unless he miraculously becomes a reliable scorer, Minnesota will never contend for a championship with him as its second best player. A big three of Rubio, Wiggins, and Towns, though?
If I have yet to convince you, watch the following highlight reel of Towns in Kentucky’s win over Georgia last Tuesday. Towns finished with 19 points on 8-12 shooting with seven rebounds. This video highlights all of Towns’ strengths.