There is no sugarcoating this one. Karl-Anthony Towns’s torn meniscus, an injury that will reportedly keep the Minnesota Timberwolves big man out indefinitely, is a serious blow to a team that’s been at the top of the Western Conference standings for most of the season.
Much of the Wolves’ success this season has been predicated on the consistency of their starting lineup. The unit of Towns, Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert, Mike Conley and Jaden McDaniels is one of only five groups that has played at least 600 minutes together so far this season. And it is second only to the Denver Nuggets’ championship starters in net rating among those lineups.
Towns was having a fantastic season. He was comfortable playing second fiddle to Edwards. And he proved he can be part of an elite defensive team. He and Gobert have worked through much of the growing pains they endured last season, and Minnesota’s size is a constant thorn in the side of other conference opponents.
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So, what are the options?
The quartet of Edwards, Gobert, Conley and McDaniels has a net rating of 3.1 in 147 minutes together with Towns off the floor, per pbpstats.com. The defense in those 147 minutes has been solid, but the offense has been a struggle. That’s not a terrible place to start.
One definite positive to work on: With Naz Reid playing in place of Towns with the rest of the starters, Minnesota has a 19.1 net rating in 67 minutes. A small sample size, but a group certainly worth a look. The Wolves also have an option to go smaller with Kyle Anderson in place of Towns, but the Anderson-plus-starters lineup hasn’t been very good this season.
Reid, who would probably be a starter on most teams, will be incredibly useful with Towns out. The issue now is who will play behind him and Gobert. Chris Finch is almost certainly going to have to become comfortable with some smaller looks than this team typically plays with. While those lineups certainly have potential, they’re also a little bit of a departure from the team’s identity.
The timing is extra unfortunate for Minnesota. After the trade deadline, the team can’t try to address Towns’s absence via trade. The buyout market is also getting thinner by the day. The answers are going to have to come from within.
Ultimately, can the Wolves survive the next few weeks without Towns? There is certainly enough talent on this team to make up for his absence in the short term. Towns missed extended time last season, so there should at least be some familiarity with him out of the lineup.
But in a hotly contested race for the No. 1 seed, Minnesota will be working with incredibly thin margins over the next six weeks or so. And will that be enough time for Towns to recover for the playoffs? At best, Towns’s injury will hang a cloud of doubt over a team that looked genuinely ready to compete in a crowded conference.
