The Timberwolves don’t have a chance against Memphis if Karl-Anthony Towns isn’t better

The Minnesota Timberwolves are back in the playoffs for the first time since 2018 after clinching the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference with Tuesday’s win over the LA Clippers.

The stakes of the game were huge, and you can tell how much the Wolves wanted it by their over-the-top celebration in the immediate aftermath. So in a game that meant so much to the franchise, surely their most tenured and supposed best player put the team on his back…right?

Not exactly.

Karl-Anthony Towns finished the game with 11 points on 3-of-11 shooting with five rebounds and a team-worst -14. He fouled out with more than seven minutes left and his team down seven. Patrick Beverley had a bigger impact than him. Anthony Edwards and D’Angelo Russell brought it home for Minnesota.

For their troubles, the Wolves get the No. 2 Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the playoffs. And while they were able to escape the currently eighth-seeded Clippers in a bad Towns game, that won’t happen here. Minnesota is 6.5-point underdogs for Game 1 with +280 odds to win the series on Tipico Sportsbook, the second-longest odds of all the first-round matchups already set.

Towns is Minnesota’s leading scorer at almost 25 points per game – his fifth time in the last six years leading the team. But postseason intensity is different and something he hasn’t experienced much. He got a reminder of that Tuesday. The Clippers blitzed him with doubles from the very beginning, forcing him to make quick decisions and get rid of the ball. He didn’t respond well.

That’s concerning because Towns is sure to see more of the same against Memphis. The Grizzlies are even better defensively than LA, particularly on the interior where they have a Defensive Player of the Year candidate in Jaren Jackson Jr. They also score better than the Clippers, which furthers the need for Towns to have an impact on offense. But then Memphis also has more players who can get in the paint and potentially get Towns in foul trouble if he isn’t smarter on defense.

For however long this series lasts, I don’t think he’ll be as bad as he was against the Clippers. But then again, he had a career year shooting in 2017-18 when he made the playoffs for the first time – 21 PPG on 55% FG and 42% 3-pt FG – just to see a major dip in his numbers over five games against the Rockets (15 PPG on 47% FG and 27% 3-pt FG).

If he’s better, Minnesota is still going to have a hard time winning. But if he’s not, these games will get ugly and this series will be over very quickly.