Minnesota Timberwolves: Should Karl-Anthony Towns be an All-Star starter?

Karl-Anthony Towns may not be getting the recognition he deserves in the fan voting for the All-Star Game, but his recent stretch is making the case that the Minnesota Timberwolves’ big man deserves to be a starter.

The Minnesota Timberwolves have had no shortage of drama this season.

There was the start of training camp, which came with a trade request from their star player in Jimmy Butler. The season began with struggles on both sides of the ball and a below.-500 first 40 games of the season resulted in the firing of head coach Tom Thibodeau.

Sure, it might seem as though the Timberwolves should be at the bottom of the Western Conference standings, but the Wolves are only two games from the No. 8 seed. The main reason for that, of course, is the insane level at which Karl-Anthony Towns is playing right now.

While it took a few weeks to get going, Towns has been playing at another level over the past few weeks and it’s his leadership that is keeping this team in the playoff hunt.

So far, KAT is averaging 22.4 points per game, to go along with per-game career-bests in blocks (2.0), steals (0.9), assists (3.0), and rebounds (12.6), all while shooting 83 percent on free throws and 49.6 percent on field goals. Plus, he’s playing two fewer minutes per game this season than last year and 3.4 less minutes per game than two years ago.

Oh, yeah, and this happened…

Here’s interim head coach Ryan Saunders on Towns’ massive game against the Pelicans.

"“Twenty seven rebounds means you’re really playing to win,” Timberwolves interim head coach Ryan Saunders said. “And you’re playing meaningful possessions where you understand that this was a win that we needed against a team that we’re going to be fighting with for playoff positioning. For Karl to say that and then to come out and do it, that’s a big testament to him.”"

Going back to Dec 30., Karl-Anthony Towns dropped 34 points, 18 rebounds, seven assists and six blocks. That is a stat-line we haven’t seen since Kareem Adul-Jabbar was doing that in the ’70s.

There were tough moments in the last year in which it was insinuated that Towns was ‘soft’, but in the first half of this season, KAT has silenced those experts by playing the best defense of his short career.

Towns’ current level of play is absolutely worthy of him being an All-Star starter as he has carried the Timberwolves on his back on a nightly basis. Of course, the Western Conference is stacked, and with LeBron James’ move to the West, it complicates the All-Star selection process even more.

The new All-Star format features the top votes-getter from each conference as the captain, and he will be in charge of drafting his team’s reserves from a pool selected by the coaches. All-Star starters are voted in by a combination of fans, players, and media, while the coaches select the reserves.

Timberwolves fans need to get online and cast their vote for Karl-Anthony Towns as a starter. Towns hasn’t been in the top-10 in frontcourt voting in either of the first two returns released by the league, and that needs to change as soon as possible.