Minnesota Timberwolves: KAT will be the most valuable Wolves player
Karl-Anthony Towns looks to be the Minnesota Timberwolves franchise cornerstone for the foreseeable future, but this season will be the year that he becomes the teams best player.
The Minnesota Timberwolves made the playoffs for the first time in 14 years and all seems to be going somewhat smoothly. There have been a few ripples with the staff, future and contracts, but what is known is that the Wolves look to be on the verge of another successful season.
The Wolves successful season will be delivered by none other than Karl-Anthony Towns. The former No.1 overall pick had himself another great season and even made his first appearance at the NBA All-Star Game.
His stats did in fact go down this last season but that was largely due to more talent and scoring options being on the team. This last season he averaged 21.3 points, 12.3 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.4 blocks and 0.8 steals per game.
He’s only 22 years old and is entering his fourth season. Which means that he’s faced with bigger expectations. That’s becoming more evident as we inch closer to a possible max contract deal. Towns is yet to sign the deal, but the offer is on the table for him to sign.
Anyways, lets get back in to the swing of things. The Wolves will go as far as there best player and you could argue that that player is Jimmy Butler and you could be right; but this is Towns’ team and he and everyone knows that. Plus, if Butler can’t stay healthy it’ll be impossible for him to be the Wolves best player.
The Western Conference is only getting stronger and that means that the Wolves will be faced with an uphill battle to make the top-eight spots, especially with the LeBron and DeRozan addition. Towns will push the Wolves into the playoffs and hopefully that third or fourth seed that the Wolves were positioned at before Butler’s injury.
Despite not playing well in the playoffs, Towns will hopefully use that as a learning experience and use it as motivation to be even better this season. For a big man, he can really shoot the ball well and can even shoot it better than most non-big players. Shooting it 54.5 percent from the field and 42.1 percent from the arc.
Next: Top 3 bargain signing in Wolves history
He will need to get better on defense, but hopefully with more experience and another year with Taj Gibson and Butler will help towards that. He’s got all the skills to be one of the great offensive players, it’s just a matter of time before the defensive side of things start to click. Even his defensive coach was let go over the offseason, therefore you can expect some changes in his game.
The Wolves are set to make another run at the playoffs and they will be running behind the Wolves MVP, Towns.
Towns may even be in the running for Most Valuable Player of the entire league fairly soon, watch out for the next Dunking with Wolves post to outline that.