lipoli390 wrote:CoolBreeze44 wrote:I go back and forth in my mind on Towns. I marvel at his offensive game but get just as easily frustrated with his lack of overall impact on the franchise. I'm afraid to trade him and equally afraid to keep investing in him. Last year I wanted to trade him, and sometimes I still wonder what kind of package we could get if he was shopped. Next year I want to see him put winning above everything else. That means he needs to mature and not let his emotions bring him and the team down. He needs to get a key deflection or blocked shot at a critical time. He needs to make winning passes when he gets too much defensive attention. And he needs to be a much better leader. If he can't have a bigger impact on the outcome of games, I think we know what we need to do.
I've never given a second thought to keeping KAT - so far. But I completely agree with you that he has to mature and show more leadership.
There's a problem when one of your rookies show more maturity on the court than your 5-year veteran leader. That has to change. KAT needs to get a better grip on his emotions and play smarter. Getting control of his emotions is probably the key to KAT playing smarter. His emotions clearly cause him to lose focus and do dumb things. Nevertheless, he did improve defensively this season and he's reduced his whining at the officials even though he still whines too much. His passing has also improved even though he makes too many ill-advised passes that result in turnovers.
What is sometime under-appreciated with KAT is how consistently great he is game after game. It's rare that he doesn't give you at least 20 highly efficient points as well as 10+ rebounds. He averaged 24.6, 26.5 and 24.8 points per game in respectively in each of the last 3 seasons. That's not 35 points one game and 15 points the next. It's 20+ just about every game and always efficiently. More recently, he's been piling up assists, averaging 4.5 assists the past two seasons. He's just too good not to continue trying to build around. He just hasn't had talent around him and the one season he had another elite player on the roster, this team went to the playoffs and would have finished as a 4th or 5th seed if Butler hadn't gotten hurt. KAT was only 21 at the time. I think we'll appreciate him more as he enters his prime the next couple of seasons paired again with talented players like Ant, McDaniels, DLO and Beasley.
We can always get just as much in exchange for KAT two years from now as we could get now or could have gotten last year. He has three years left on his deal. The way I look at it is that we have two seasons to make this work with KAT and DLO. If we're not a really formidable playoff team by then, the Wolves will have to trade KAT. Until then, the organization has to do everything possible to make it work. I can finally see it working, thanks to the addition of Ant and McDaniels. makes
Reading about McDaniels possibly putting too much pressure on himself his first year of college made me think about Towns and how maybe he needs to be able to not have to feel like he is the guy. Towns clearly thinks highly of himself and puts a lot of pressure on himself but also ends up having a martyr complex. I think at this point Towns isn't going to be the guy leading your team to a finals. I mean he stil could be but it doesn't feel that way. I'm not going to give him a pass but to be fair to him I don't think the Wolves have helped the guy because of all the turnover around him. On the other hand what guard would you say has RESLLy meshed with Towns and they have played off each other? Nobody that I've seen yet even with Towns offensive gifts. I don't think it should reflect too poorly on a guy like towns that he isn't THE guy to lead a team to a championship. There are only so many of those guys in any era and they still needed talent around them and someone that was good at coaching or at least that specific team. If Ant can be that guy and the Wolves actually have some other talented players that help winning we may see Towns overall play match more with his abilities. I also think that if Finch can be the guy that can tap into Towns with players around him and get more out of Towns that would be ideal. One thing about Towns is that some of his offensive skill set (shooting) is great to be a complimentary player. He has gotten much better in the screen game but in the past it seems there are lots of little things he could do a little better like moving without the basketball.
Honestly if the Wolves were offered the right package I wouldn't be opposed to dealing Towns especially because we have Naz Reid that if Towns wasn't on the roster we would be talking about him possibly being the team's center for the next 10 years. I'm not saying Reid would be an all-star or whatever but I think he could be a really solid starter for a good team. Trades as big as Towns being involved would have to have some serious discussions between teams to get to a point where it would happen. Rosas isn't going to do that at this point and I don't blame him.