Minnesota Timberwolves: Karl-Anthony Towns falls to No. 4 on 25-under-25 list

FanSided’s NBA team has released the 2018 25-under-25 list, with Minnesota Timberwolves superstar Karl-Anthony Towns coming in with a surprise ranking.

Last year, Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns ranked No. 2 on FanSided’s 25-under-25 player ranking, trailing only Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Heading into the 2018-19 campaign, however, the latest edition of FanSided’s list places Towns in fourth, a drop of two spots despite KAT’s first All-Star appearance in February of 2018.

Be sure to check out the list (and the best-of-the-rest) in their entirety at the links. In the meantime, here are the top 10:

10. Jaylen Brown, Boston Celtics

9. Clint Capela, Houston Rockets

8. Devin Booker, Phoenix Suns

7. Jayson Tatum, Houston Rockets

6. Donovan Mitchell, Utah Jazz

5. Ben Simmons, Philadelphia 76ers

4. Karl-Anthony Towns, Minnesota Timberwolves

3. Nikola Jokic, Denver Nuggets

2. Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers

1. Giannis Antetokounmpo,  Milwaukee Bucks

Somehow, Towns slipped from No. 2 in 2017 to No. 4 on the 2018 list.

Sure, his per-game numbers and counting stats were slightly; that tends to happen when a high-usage All-Star is added to the starting lineup.

But Towns’ 3-point percentage rocketed up from 36.7 percent on 3.4 attempts per game in 2016-17 to 42.1 percent on 3.5 attempts per contest in 2017-18. His free throw percentage improved, too, jumping from 83.3 to 85.8 percent, and his field goal percentage ticked upwards slightly, too.

That means that his true shooting percentage was an awesome 64.6 percent, bested only by Steph Curry, Rudy Gobert, and a handful of low-usage centers who only shoot the ball close to the rim and ranking just ahead of Kevin Durant.

(Save for new teammate Anthony Tolliver, that is. Seriously, it’s a weird list.)

While one of the knocks on Towns continues to be defense (spelled out nicely by Hickory High’s Ian Levy), he objectively improved last season. ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus statistic shows that his rating climbed from a poor -1.41 in 2016-17 to a mediocre 0.44 last year — still in the range of Dirk Nowitzki, but progressing in the right direction nonetheless.

Towns had a fantastic season, and the only explanations that could possibly be used for ranking him lower than in 2017 would be the alleged off-the-court consternation between he and Butler, although there isn’t any hard evidence to back it up and it would seem like a weird reason to dock him a spot or two.

All things considered, it’s fair to rank Embiid ahead of Towns. He’s much better defensively to this point, and the the consistency finally seems to be there for Joel.

The Jokic thing is a bit harder to swallow, as there isn’t much outside of the aforementioned RPM statistic that suggests that Jokic is actually a better player than KAT.

Moving on from Towns, it’s notable that Andrew Wiggins fell from No. 11 on last year’s list to unranked this year, even in the best-of-the-rest rankings that go all the way to No. 35. Despite still being just 23 years old, the inefficiency and defensive issues are finally catching up to Wiggins’ national reputation, it seems.

Still, the Wolves have a nice core of one of the top-two (or four, I guess) players under 25 years of age, another that just missed the cutoff, and a true superstar in his prime in Butler. Here’s hoping that leads to more than just another No. 8 seed this season…