Minnesota Sports Forum

god damn


how do you have 0 turnovers playing that aggressive

This should be the response to every free agency thread

Yup, he's a flat out stud. He's putting up rookie year numbers that are right there with a number of the greats. And he's doing it at a younger age than most of them.

Q12543 wrote:Yup, he's a flat out stud. He's putting up rookie year numbers that are right there with a number of the greats. And he's doing it at a younger age than most of them.

And with much less college experience.

Karl Towns vs. Hakeem Olajuwon rookie year per 36 mins

KAT: 20.1 pts, 12.1 reb, 1.7 ast, 2.1 blk
HO: 20.9 pts, 12.0 reb, 1.4 ast, 2.7 blk

AP Guy: Towns 35, 11, 3 blocks. I asked him if he ever surprises himself: "I do surprise myself sometimes. Missing 2 FTs, missing open jump shots."

Yep. We are witnessing the birth of a star who looks almost certain to outshine every wolf in our history other than KG--and even that's a possibility. For the first time in 16 years of following this team, I feel like I could seriously be watching the rookie year of the greatest player in our franchise's history.

It's crazy. He got so much attention down the stretch last season and leading up to the draft, but it required a little faith to believe in it, because he did not show THIS last year at Kentucky.

In flashes, yes. And if you looked at his efficiency and per-minute production, he looked great. But the shooting, the range, the ability to run the floor and finish like he has been lately, the passing . . . there wasn't a lot of evidence of this in games. Every time you read about a guy who said he was a great shooter it was a guy who saw him in practice or in high school.

And yet, here it's freaking true! Even better, I love his hustle and decision-making. He was sold SO hard going into the draft, and he's somehow managed to exceed that. It's so awesome to have this guy on our team.

Now I just want to see him improve his interior defense a bit more. : )

Pretty rare to combine his skills with the relentlessness and ferocity he plays with. Given good health over time, KG will be #2 or #3 in franchise lore.

#2 or #3 assuming we clone Towns and both of him wind up better than KG? : )

There was plenty of evidence, IMO. Towns showed these skills at UK/Dominican basketball team. Some fans just didn't see it apparently. The real thing that people were scared about was his MPG in college. Some also thought he didn't have the offensive skill to be a primary option, even though Kentucky ran their offense through him for a large part of the year.

The good thing is that he's showing it at the NBA level where it counts. This is probably the worst he'll be in his career, and that's scary for the league.

Camden wrote:There was plenty of evidence, IMO. Towns showed these skills at UK/Dominican basketball team. Some fans just didn't see it apparently. The real thing that people were scared about was his MPG in college. Some also thought he didn't have the offensive skill to be a primary option, even though Kentucky ran their offense through him for a large part of the year.

The good thing is that he's showing it at the NBA level where it counts. This is probably the worst he'll be in his career, and that's scary for the league.

He was the consensus #1 pick for a reason, true, but he's done way more this year than what he showed at Kentucky. How many games for Kentucky or the Dominican did Towns rain long jumpers like he has been for us? I watched the Kentucky games, and never saw this kind of shooting with range from him. A couple long jumpers and that was basically it. I don't know about the DR team. The evidence on his shooting was high school, workout tape, and anecdotal. It turns out it was right, but he never shot at Kentucky like what he's doing this year. We all knew Cal was intentionally playing him down low, but that also meant Towns never really proved he could shoot and play such a huge role. And while his per-minute numbers were great, and he more than passed the eye test, his overall stats didn't jump out at you. Yes, that team was loaded, but it still meant you were going more on faith than you would on a guy who had been through 2 or 3 full seasons of playing 30 minutes per game. Towns had shown more evidence than in Kyrie and his 10 games in school (and he turned out pretty good), but it was still a somewhat limited sample size that didn't feature what he's shown he can do this year. This is what makes his production this year so impressive to me. He's surpassed the hype when even the hype was promising beyond what he was doing at Kentucky.