The Inside the NBA crew is notoriously hard on big men around the league being that Shaq, arguably the most dominant center of all-time and at least of the last 40 years, and Charles Barkley, a dominant, undersized power forward, occupy two of the four spots at the desk.
As the game of basketball has evolved and the questions asked of centers and power forwards move further away from the traditional norms Shaq and Chuck played under, they have grown increasingly frustrated with the state of the big man in the NBA. The quickest way to anger those two and get them in agreement is to have a big man who is supposedly a very good player failing to dominate or take over games in a traditional way.
So far in these playoffs, Shaq and Chuck have taken aim at two players in particular: Al Horford and Karl-Anthony Towns. Horford being an All-Star who averages 14 points and nine boards per game angers them, so they have challenged him to step up (which to this point he has). Karl-Anthony Towns, meanwhile, is heralded as one of the next great offensive centers, but the Timberwolves failed to use him enough in Game 1 against Houston’s switching, leading to a Barkley rant about them being dumb.
In Game 2, they wanted to see more out of him, but his nine first-half shots seemed a bit forced, and he still wasn’t dominating in the post the way they wanted him to, so at the half they took him to task for what they believed he should be doing. Shaq has some very good points about Towns needing to attack quicker when he catches the ball on the block and leverage his strength more, while Barkley, on the other hand, misses the mark a bit.
"He's got a long way to go offensively… he's got to get into the gym and work on his game this summer." – Chuck on KAT pic.twitter.com/rgRlF8WIeL
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 19, 2018
“What it really shows me, Ernie, is the limitations of his game,” Barkley says. “He got a long way to go offensively. I mean those shots he’s getting, those aren’t big man shots. Those are like a 7-footer shooting fadeaways against little guys. He’s got to get in the gym. First of all, I like him a lot as a person and like him a lot as a player, but he is so limited offensively. He’s got to get in the gym and work on his game this summer.”
Of all the ways to describe Karl-Anthony Towns, “limited offensively” would not show up on most people’s list. Had Barkley offered up some more detailed criticism and thoughts on some of those things he should work on, I’d be willing to hear him out, but given Towns’ body of work to simply say he’s limited on that end seems fairly absurd.
Barkely’s chief concern is Towns not shooting “big man shots,” which in the clips from the first half he absolutely took some bad shots. However, it doesn’t take an especially deep dive into Towns’ film to find footage of his excellent footwork in the post and his proficiency with his back to the basket and facing up. While Barkley would surely scoff at any attempts at reasoning against this take with stats, the shot-tracking data on NBA.com offers a pretty good taste of how diverse Towns’ offensive game is.
He did take 550 jump shots this season, including 285 three-pointers, and shot 44 percent overall and 42.1 percent on threes, which is pretty stellar no matter what position one plays. As for stronger post work, Towns took 149 hook shots this season, which is certainly not some newfangled innovation of modern basketball, and he made an impressive 56.4 percent. He shot 63.3 percent on the season inside eight feet and 42.3 percent from outside 24 feet, which is rather insane.
Towns absolutely had a bad first half in Game 2 and certainly could have been more aggressive in Game 1. Few who watch him regularly would argue that there are times where he settles for a jump shot, and there are some constructive points one can make about his offensive game in the post and on faceups that would undoubtedly help him continue to get better. For instance, Shaq’s point about being decisive and going quickly to beat the double team or recognizing the double and finding the open man were great.
He could be more aggressive and demand the ball more, which I’m sure Shaq would love to see because he is such a unique and dominant player. However, to call him “limited offensively” based off of 24 minutes of action against the NBA’s best team seems a bit misguided.
