Karl-Anthony Towns

For nine seasons, the Timberwolves’ record book and their heartbreak wore the same number: 32.

Vitals
Born	November 15, 1995, Edison, New Jersey
High school	St. Joseph (Metuchen, New Jersey)
College	Kentucky
Drafted	No. 1 overall, 2015
Seasons as a Wolf	9 (2015–2024)
Number	32

The cornerstone. For nearly a decade the Minnesota Timberwolves belonged to Karl-Anthony Towns, the No. 1 overall pick who arrived as a cornerstone offensive talent and departed as the most skilled scoring big man the franchise had ever produced. A seven-footer who shot like a wing, Towns rewrote the club’s record book, carried the burden of being the face of an operation that could rarely get out of its own way, and endured staggering private grief in the most public of jobs. His Minnesota years were equal parts brilliance and heartbreak: a four-time All-Star, a 60-point night, a supermax commitment, a poisonous feud with Jimmy Butler, and, at the end, a trade that sent him east on the doorstep of another contending season.

The arrival. Minnesota took Towns with the first pick of the 2015 draft, plucking a one-and-done big man out of Kentucky to anchor the franchise’s post-Garnett future. He needed no adjustment period. Towns won Rookie of the Year in 2016 unanimously, collecting all 130 first-place votes while averaging 18.3 points and 10.5 rebounds a game. For a fan base conditioned to treat every high pick as a gamble, Towns looked like the sure thing that never comes.

The best shooting big man alive. By his second season he was pouring in 25.1 points a night, and the shooting only kept expanding outward. Towns drilled 42.1 percent from three in 2017-18 and hovered around 40 percent for years, a stroke no center his size had any business owning. He made four All-Star teams as a Wolf (2018, 2019, 2022 and 2024) and earned All-NBA Third Team honors twice. On March 14, 2022, he detonated for a franchise-record 60 points and 17 rebounds against San Antonio, 32 of them in a single third quarter. Weeks earlier, at All-Star Weekend, he had become the first center ever to win the Three-Point Contest. The résumé was the argument, and the argument was settled: nobody had ever combined size and shooting like this in a Minnesota uniform.

The face of a hard-luck franchise. The trouble was everything around him. Towns spent most of his prime as the marquee name on teams that could not win, and the weight of it showed. His 2017-18 club, built alongside Butler and Andrew Wiggins under Tom Thibodeau, finally ended a 14-year playoff drought before losing to Houston in five. For years, that was the whole of his postseason experience. Minnesota bet on him anyway, signing Towns to a five-year, $190 million supermax extension in September 2018. He also became a lightning rod off the floor, an earnest and emotionally transparent public figure who talked himself up and often put his foot in his mouth. That corniness made him an easy target in a losing market that wanted more scowl than smile.

The Butler storm. The lowest point came in the fall of 2018, when Butler demanded a trade and returned to a now-infamous October practice. He berated the front office and ran the third unit over the starters, torching Towns and Wiggins. Butler reportedly screamed that the team could not win without him, and the confrontation undermined Towns’ standing before he had even inherited the roster. Butler was dealt to Philadelphia that November. Towns took over an unquestioned throne and a locker room that had just been told, loudly, what its ceiling was.

Grief in public. Then came the hardest chapter. In April 2020 his mother, Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, died of complications from COVID-19 after weeks on a ventilator. By that December, Towns revealed he had lost seven family members to the virus. He turned the loss outward, becoming one of the sport’s most visible voices for pandemic awareness and staying deeply engaged in the Twin Cities community and his family’s Dominican roots. On the first anniversary of her death he sat out a game rather than play. Whatever the standings said, this was the stretch that made Wolves Nation stop rooting for the player and start rooting for the person.

The handoff. When Minnesota drafted Anthony Edwards first overall in 2020, the franchise’s center of gravity began to shift, and Towns did the unglamorous thing: he moved over. Beside Edwards, and later with Rudy Gobert, Towns accepted a smaller share of the offense, drifted toward a stretch-forward role, and never sulked as the team became Ant’s. The reward arrived in 2024, when that group reached the Western Conference Finals against Dallas, the deepest Minnesota had gone since 2004. Towns handled being the No. 2 on his own team with a grace the franchise’s history had rarely rewarded.

The exit. It ended without warning. On the eve of the 2024-25 season, the Wolves shocked the league by trading Towns to the Knicks in a three-team deal that returned Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a top-13-protected first-round pick, a move driven as much by the second apron’s math as by basketball. Nine seasons in Minnesota were over.

By the numbers

Regular-season stats with the Wolves, per Basketball-Reference:

Season	GP	PPG	RPG	APG	FG%	3P%
2015-16	82	18.3	10.5	2.0	.542	.341
2016-17	82	25.1	12.3	2.7	.542	.367
2017-18	82	21.3	12.3	2.4	.545	.421
2018-19	77	24.4	12.4	3.4	.518	.400
2019-20	35	26.5	10.8	4.4	.508	.412
2020-21	50	24.8	10.6	4.5	.486	.387
2021-22	74	24.6	9.8	3.6	.529	.410
2022-23	29	20.8	8.1	4.8	.495	.366
2023-24	62	21.8	8.3	3.0	.504	.416

Wolves career totals

Franchise ranks

• 2nd Points (13,121, behind Garnett)
• 2nd Rebounds (6,216, behind Garnett)
• 2nd Made threes (975, behind Edwards)
• 2nd Free throws made (2,504)
• 4th Games played (573)

Per the all-time franchise leaderboard.

Accolades

• 4× NBA All-Star (2018, 2019, 2022, 2024)
• Unanimous NBA Rookie of the Year, 2016
• 2× All-NBA Third Team (2017-18, 2021-22)
• First center to win the NBA Three-Point Contest, 2022
• Franchise single-game scoring record: 60 points, March 14, 2022
• NBA All-Rookie First Team and Skills Challenge champion, 2016

Lore

The shooter who redrew the position. Long before stretch bigs became the league’s default, Towns was the proof of concept: a true center who could pull up from 27 feet, run pick-and-pop as the release valve, and punish any defense that dared to help. On Minnesota teams that spent years searching for spacing and shot creation, his jumper was often the only reliable thing in the building. He left behind one of the most productive offensive record books in franchise history, from the 60-point night to nine seasons of counting stats.

Corny, earnest, and impossible to dislike. The persona that once drew eye-rolls aged into something warmer. Towns was goofy and openly sentimental in a business that prizes cool. He was quick to smile and quick to say the awkward thing. Over time that sincerity read less like a flaw than like the reason people held on to him through the losing and the grief. He carried the anniversary of his mother’s death with him every year and never pretended it was anything but heavy.

A ring, at last. The final act came in New York. In June 2026 the Knicks won the NBA Finals over the same San Antonio team that had ended Minnesota’s own season that spring, and Karl-Anthony Towns was a champion. It was a feel-good ending for a player who had earned one, and a familiar ache for the fans who watched him win it somewhere else. In a franchise that keeps teaching its stars to find their titles after they leave, Towns wrote the newest chapter of the oldest Minnesota story.

The franchise record book is still written in his name; the championship ring is on someone else’s hand.