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Immediate Impact, Unlimited Future, And The Unknown: Karl-Anthony Towns, Deconstructed

Karl-Anthony Towns has been the best rookie in what could be a historically great rookie class. From here, he could do, and become, just about anything.
Illustration by Elliot Gerard

This season's rookie class could be something special. There is talent and depth, size and skill, and the promise that there could be a few transcendent players in the mix. Oddly, though, some elements of each player's game and physical presentation feel familiar. Rookies Deconstructed is a series that means to take each rookie apart, identifying the building blocks we know and the natural comparisons that emerge and appreciating how they come together in ways that are radically and invigoratingly new. Because these are rookies, some comparisons are necessarily forward-looking.

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Rasheed Wallace And The External Struggle

For Rasheed Wallace, the end was ugly. There was his bloated, stumbling season with the Boston Celtics, firing up ill-conceived three-pointers and barking at ghosts. Then two years of retirement before a fire sale of his dignity over the course of two dozen or so games with the New York Knicks. Some NBA greats burn out, and some fade away. Wallace loafed indignantly into the sunset.

Read More: Sturdiness, Loneliness, And Just Enough Magic: D'Angelo Russell Deconstructed

The end should not obscure the fact that Rasheed Wallace was Great, with a capital G. For a few seasons, the whole word probably deserved to be all in caps. Wallace worked at both ends, providing a post-up game and soft jumper, rim defense and rugged rebounding. He wasn't quite a position-bending athlete but he had the upper hand in quickness and speed against most of his contemporaries.

And yet Wallace was never quite as good as his potential suggested he could be. The lazy answer is that he was a headcase, too distractible and difficult to do everything he could have. There is some truth to that, probably, but Wallace's complex went beyond his incessant badgering of referees. For Wallace, the struggle was always external. It was him against overly handsy opponents, incompetent referees, flawed teammates, restrictive coaches. The story of Wallace's shortcomings is often placed in the genre of man against his demons, but Sheed was always too busy battling someone else to notice what his own demons were up to.

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Karl-Anthony Towns has a Rasheed-grade collection of skills, and then some. The jumper, the mobility, the defensive fire, are all right there. Joy still seems to be an essential element of his basketball experience, which is a good thing. One season into his NBA career, Towns does not seem to have decided on an existential foe or a battlefield upon which to meet them. For many of the greatest to play the game, the struggle is internal and the enemy is the hypothetical limits of their own performance. Choosing this path means that the game never ends—every workout, every practice, every moment spent on leisure or family is part of the same campaign. It's hard not to wonder how long it will take Kobe Bryant's mind, body, and soul to adjust to the new reality of his retirement, or if they will.

There is a path somewhere between Wallace's external projections and the self-devouring metaphysical conflict of players like Kobe. The middle way offers the risks of both, but also a chance to be both your best self and yourself. Watching Towns smile, and dunk, and high-five, and block shots, one can't help but hope for that sort of compromise for him.

Tim Duncan, So Good, So Fast

There are so few sure things in the NBA Draft, and so many ways for a seemingly can't-miss prospect to miss. Tim Duncan was the exception. The best player in college basketball, he was drafted by the Spurs, moved up a competitive tier, and immediately became one of the best players there. The evaluative portion of our brain doesn't quite know what to do with this kind of immediate impact; it just doesn't scan. When it comes to young talent, we have become accustomed to living through a period of fantasy and projection before dealing with the player that emerges.

By the end of his second season, Duncan was already the best player on a championship team. His learning curve was a flat line across the top of the paper. There was scarcely time to guess at what his ceiling might be before our faces were mashed up against it. It wasn't just that Duncan was better than your average rookie, although he very much was. It was that he arrived, seemingly fully-formed, at the height of his powers. The story of Duncan and how he ended up in San Antonio is established. The Spurs were good until David Robinson got hurt. Suddenly not good, they did everything in their power to push the needle towards terrible, knowing that Duncan was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They won the lottery, and he was even better than anyone imagined.

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Illustration by Elliot Gerard

If Karl-Anthony Towns were to be frozen, developmentally speaking, at this moment in time, it would be a tremendous disappointment. He will likely win Rookie of the Year, and every one of his accomplishments in his first season served to raise expectations for what comes next. Towns is already very good, but he is also very raw—his developmental curve has been sketched in and it is steep. He will get better but not so much because he has flaws that need repairing but because his strengths have yet to be built upon. He will have plenty of help, and need it, but Towns and his talents will almost certainly change the fate of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He represents exactly the kind of return teams dream about from a top pick in the draft, and the kind they hardly ever get.

Kevin Garnett Had No Choice

Kevin Garnett is the most obvious and inescapable comparison for Karl-Anthony Towns, in large part because both began their careers in Minnesota, surrounded by youth and optimism. Now, Garnett's career has come full circle—he is back with the Timberwolves serving as a veteran mentor to Towns and his teammates. Beyond the various associations, the physical similarities between the two are striking. The height, the length, the nimble feet, the deft hand-eye coordination, and the leaping ability to bring it all above the rim. The two are linked by more than a uniform.

Someday, hopefully in the distant future, when Karl-Anthony Towns is looking back at the end of a great career, he will give interviews and he will talk about the impact of Garnett, his legacy and his leadership. But what will ultimately delineate that relationship, and define the player Towns will become, are the places where he will break with the Garnett template and set out on his own.

Illustration by Elliot Gerard

Garnett, before the erosion of time, was a one-in-a-million overlap of body and skill. He could have been almost anything on the basketball court, and occasionally he was. Garnett also played in a time when the basketball imagination was not quite as liberated as it is today. His possibilities were capped by time and space, by the creativity of his coaches and the limitations of his teammates. That last one is of particular importance, because it is tied to the lack of team success that so defined his reputation early in his career. Garnett could have been anything but, as a measure of selfless devotion to team, he decided to be what his teammates were not. Garnett certainly pushed on the edges of what big men did, but not nearly as much as he could have.

Towns begins his career with many of the same tools, and with a similarly miraculous combination of body and skill. He too could be anything, and is lucky enough to play professional basketball in a time where that elasticity will be utilized. Towns, and his three-point shooting, rim-rolling, and paint protection, is not just the perfect modern big man. He is also the ideal big man for a future we haven't yet reached. He passes like a point guard and beats wing players off the dribble. He can stay in front of anyone on defense, at least long enough to put his finger on the scale of expected value. In the past, Towns' talents might have been marginalized to narrow advantages or mismatches to be exploited. In a league that is increasingly emphasizing creativity and unconventionality, he could, literally and figuratively, do so much more.

Wednesday night, the Timberwolves relieved interim head coach Sam Mitchell of his duties, beginning the search for a new vision and a new voice. The team built momentum in the latter half of this season but lagged on modernity. Moving on from Mitchell implies a shift in focus, and perhaps a recognition that this team needs to get with the times. Wherever they go from here, you can be damn certain that Towns will be the most important piece. Karl-Anthony Towns is not a modern anything, and not the next iteration of any player. He is a portal to the future, waiting to be opened.