Timberwolves’ Towns and Butler ranked on SI.com’s top-100 players

SI.com’s The Crossover released the third part of their Top 100 NBA Players ranking series, and the Timberwolves had their two star players revealed in the #11-30 range.

After seeing a pair of new Timberwolves players listed in part one of the SI.com Top 100 NBA Players ranking on The Crossover and Andrew Wiggins ranked in part two earlier this week, the countdown has finally completed.

In part three, we saw the Wolves remaining two players in the top-100 ranked, and they both just barely missed out on cracking the top-10.

Big men ranked lower than both Karl-Anthony Towns and Jimmy Butler in the top-30? That would include Paul Millsap (#27), Kevin Love (#26), Nikola Jokic (#25), Marc Gasol (#24), DeMarcus Cousins (#23), and Blake Griffin (#22). It also includes guards and forwards such as Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, and Damian Lillard. It’s a pretty impressive list with a number of huge names that Towns has surpassed after just two seasons in the league.

Indeed, KAT is ranked as the 14th-best player in the league. And the write-up accompanying the ranking identifies his biggest right up front.

"The worst that could be said about Towns is that the 21-year-old who played over 3,000 high-usage minutes wasn’t always completely committed on defense. He could be caught moseying back in transition, catching his breath at a time when the Wolves needed him. It’s clear Towns has more to learn about what goes into defending at a competitive level. It’s also clear that in all matters of basketball (including defense, in time), he figures to be an absolute monster."

Yep. We know this, and it indeed seems to be as much effort as it is ability. He still isn’t strong enough to guard the biggest of big men on the block by himself, and he isn’t quite aware enough to be a solidly consistent help defender, either. But he’ll only get better. Which is also true of his offensive game…

"Towns’s (25.1 PPG, 12.3 RBG, 2.7 APG) present-day performance becomes all the more terrifying when you consider that the best is so clearly yet to come. Even modern bigs don’t have this kind of floor game. The league is ready for roll men and pop shooters. No defense, however, is fully prepared for a seven-footer shooting 36.7% beyond the arc to charge so smoothly toward the rim without the slightest notice. Everything Towns does is overwhelming—so much so that it’s a struggle to even brainstorm what an ideal defender for him might look like."

Towns can score in virtually any way conceivable. The combination of pure shooting from long-range and the ability to drive to the basket is probably the craziest thing; it’s not like we haven’t seen bigs shoot 3-pointers effectively before, but it’s exceedingly rare for them to also have handles and body control as KAT does.

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The article goes on to discuss his status as the “perfect contemporary post player”, while also realizing that modern defenses have essentially figured out to stop effective post scoring entirely but shading their zone defense and help defenders to the strong side. And Towns is just learning how to pass out of double-teams to the level at which he’s capable. When he figures it all out, well, look out.

The other Timberwolf in this range is, of course, Jimmy Butler. The newcomer falls at #11, which seems about perfect. After all, we’ve heard the former Bull called a “top-15 player” with regularity this summer. Why not crack the top-10 this year, Jimmy?

Ben Golliver ridicules the Bulls for the Butler trade and accurately depicts just how good Butler is by showing Chicago’s squad with and without the superstar.

"Chicago’s stunning draft-day decision to trade Butler (23.9 PPG, 6.2 RPG, 5.5 APG) to Minnesota for young, injured and unproven pieces was the basketball front-office version of skydiving sans parachute. With the three-time All-Star shooting guard playing the heaviest minutes load of his career and posting career-highs in scoring, rebounds, assists, PER and Win Shares, Chicago managed to stumble into the playoffs at 41-41. When Butler was off the court, however, the Bulls’ net rating slipped to -7.1, which is almost identical to the Lakers’ league-worst -7.2 net rating. With Butler, the poorly-constructed Bulls were respectable. Without him, utterly abysmal."

Indeed. Golliver goes on to note that Butler is the best player the Wolves have had since in-his-prime Kevin Garnett (true), and that Butler ranked in the top-10 in the NBA in virtually all advanced metrics, including win shares, real plus-minus, and wins above replacement.

Ranked between Towns and Butler? John Wall and Paul George. The top-10 list can be found here, and it’s tough to quibble with any of the rankings once we arrive in the top couple of tiers.

Next: The Timberwolves are embracing bully-ball

Hopefully for Wolves fans, both Towns and Butler will be able to vault themselves into the top-10 by the time the 2019 list comes out at this time next year…