Just a few weeks after the Minnesota Timberwolves made him the No. 1 pick of the 2015 NBA draft, Karl-Anthony Towns gushed about the opportunity to learn from a future Hall of Famer. “It’s going to be huge,” the impressionable, talented teenager said of Kevin Garnett’s influence.
And just a couple months later, Towns is already reaping benefits of time spent with the greatest player in Timberwolves history. Here’s the 19-year-old on Garnett courtesy of NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner.
“He’s my mentor,” said Towns, who spent time with Garnett in Los Angeles last month. “Everything he knows, and countless years he’s been playing this game at a high level, [I am] just trying to garner information from him every day. Learn how to be a better leader, how to be a champion, just to be a true professional.”
It makes sense that Garnett would jump at the opportunity to mentor a player like Towns. Not only are they teammates, but the 2004 MVP no doubt sees something close a spitting image of himself in the former Kentucky big man. Like Garnett before him, Towns is a defense-oriented 7-footer who can defend multiple positions and score from the post and perimeter. He’s quite a bit bulkier than Garnett was when he entered the league straight out of high school in 1995, but Towns is nonetheless cut from the same mold as his much older frontcourt mate.
Could the pair’s unique relationship lead to Minnesota defying expectations and making a run at the playoffs in 2015-16? And more importantly, will Towns take what he learns from Garnett to eventually become a player close to the Big Ticket’s rare caliber? Only time will tell.
For now, though, it certainly seems like Garnett’s second stint with the Timberwolves is paying off exactly the way Flip Saunders imagined.
[Via NBA.com]
