The #1 Big Board – Karl Towns Jr.

Third on my draft board is Karl-Anthony Towns. This man has the honor of being my favorite player in the draft even if he isn’t the best. He’s the type of person you can’t help but to root for with his goofy, fun loving, but respectful demeanor. Overall he seems like a young bigman with his head on straight which is uncommon and he seems to have worked on his game a lot.

Starting off he’s going to have a lot of strengths the biggest of which is his shooting ability. We only saw small flashes at Kentucky (thank Cal for that) but in highschool he was an amazing shooter from deep. Karl Towns hit 127 threes his last 3 years in high school, shot 51% from 3 as a senior, shot 10-22 from the international three point line in the FIBA U-17’s, and shot 1-3 from deep against team USA in 2012. He had a few plays where he was able to shoot at Kentucky but his 81% shooting at the freethrow line (88.2% in the NCAA postseason) showed his jumper is just as good as expected.

Along with his shooting ability he showed a little bit of a post game or at least a post game that will be effective against mismatches (which is all he needs for now). He travels a lot in the post and looks like he’s off but he’s still pretty efficient down (in his 154 post possessions he shot 46% and scored 0.922 PPP). His biggest issue in the NBA would be getting deep position and if everything goes right handling double teams since he didn’t see those much.

Now handling those double teams shouldn’t be too much of an issue for Towns because he is a natural passer. He throws sharp passes and he can make them with his back to the basket, off a rebound, and he has the ability to start fastbreaks with his passes. His technical skill and his vision are both high level and most wings don’t have his passing ability (or shooting ability for that matter) at 19.

To top off all of that Towns is also a very athletic player in the open court. He is very fast end to end and his ability to jump with a running start is amazing. Now his standing vertical is weak and you don’t see too many dunks where Karl has his feet planted before the oop is thrown or too many where he gets a putback dunk when already under the basket before the shot goes up, but he makes some spectacular plays when he’s allowed to run at the rim. He also sets better screens than possibly anyone in the draft so his ability to jump while running to the rim, shoot the outside jumper, and set screens makes him a possible pick and roll monster (Kentucky didn’t use the PNR much).

Offensively he reminds me off Pau Gasol with a weaker post game and way more athleticism or a poor man’s Kevin Love in the body of a slower, less long LaMarcus Aldridge.

Defensively the kid has strengths too. In the post he is a good technical defender and while he wasn’t challenged much at his size he defended the few players that attacked him in the post very well. He is also a good rebounder and while not the best at his size he usually finds his man on his box outs. Now those are things that aren’t weaknesses but his strengths are even better.

What Towns is great at defensively is helping as a weakside defender. On this Kentucky team that guarded the initial penetration well and had another giant in WCS sharing the floor with Towns we saw him block a lot of players trying to make contested looks at the rim. He wasn’t the most effective player on his rotations but he always seemed to be there when he was on the floor and his defense probably altered more plays at the rim per minute than anyone else in the NCAA (I don’t have any numbers on this but I can make an educated guess).

Towns also guarded outside the paint well showing the ability to guard players like Frank Kaminsky pretty well outside and the ability to switch on guards and not get abused. Overall he looks like a very good defender but maybe outside of that elite tier other Kentucky guys like Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, and Nerlens Noel are in.

Now on to his negatives. First off the thing many like about him is his maturity off the court but on the court he is still an immature young big. He gets hyper and makes some of the dumbest fouls you’ll see, he loves spiking the ball out of bounds, and sometimes he seemed beaten when Cal was digging into him. This is admittedly nitpicky but it’s something you want to see him fix I mean he talks to himself during games sometimes and seems to take himself out of the game mentally. He is just not a consistent player yet.

Another small weakness is his propensity to be “just a part of the team”. He can sometimes get overshadowed by the other Kentucky players and there were many nights where he was the 10th best player to touch the floor for Kentucky. It’s something you expect from young bigs but it severely limits how I see his ceiling.

Now onto his major issues. His first major issue is that he’s weak. We’ve seen him get bullied by guys 20 pounds lighter than him and against a team like Cincinnati he was unable to take advantage of the 6-10, 230 Octavius Ellis and if anything Octavius really gave him problems. That’s consistent with his play over the whole season where the only bigmen he played at least decently were Jon Horford (who played on the Dominican Republic team with Towns coached by Cal so it’s easy to see why), Zach Auguste (who gave Towns just as much on the other end in what is probably Towns’ worst defensive game of the season), and Frank Kaminsky. Auguste and Horford are both 6-10, 230 and Kaminsky is a T-rex built 7-1 (with the standing reach of a 6-10 player at 9-1.5), 230. All of those players are known for being soft defensively.

Another major weakness is his lack of awareness. At all times Towns is playing 100% out which means he’s going to foul a lot. Sometimes (like against Notre Dame) Kentucky really needed him on the floor but due to his foul troubles he had to sit 15 minutes. This is an issue for whoever drafts him because Towns won’t be on the floor much until he seriously changes the way he plays. I’ve seen some saying he’ll average a double double as a rookie but I’d be surprised if he can play much over 20 minutes a night as a rookie. He’s a great player but his brain and body aren’t in sync.

Overall Towns is the safest bet in the draft. I think he’s basically guaranteed to be a good starter and probably an All Star with his game being the perfect game for a modern C but the biggest criticism of modern Cs overall is that they aren’t that good. I mean there’s no top 15 centers that had the game Towns has at his age. Even smaller guys like Pat Ewing (who was listed at 7-0, 220 as a freshman) had great post games and lacking outside jumpers. I feel Towns’ game is that of a PF but he was born in the body of a C. Overall he’s almost a lock to be an All Star one day but he probably won’t be contesting DeMarcus Cousins or Jahlil Okafor if he pans out.