Klomp wrote:Calinks wrote:Towns is a far more gifted offensive player than a lot of you realize. Man was a walking top ten offense before the Gobert trade. I would say a good chunk, about 30 percent, of his offense was taken away once the Timberwolves got Rudy because Towns had to play PF against quicker guys and the spacing was much different on the court. Even with his neutered offensive game he still managed to put up roughly 20 PPG a night.
Him going back to center will open his game back up. He is an easy scorer and barely ever gets shut down one on one. He alsodrives a lot more than people think, he routinely cooked other Centers from the perimeter with his drives in the season or two before Gobert. His big problem was he gets tunel vision on those drives so when teams started to load up, he created a lot of turnovers. Befor teams got smart with the loading up and foul baiting though, he was roasting normal-slow center out there. It's why in the Memphis series they had to basically take Steven Adams out of the games, Adams is a damn good player but the dude was getting molested by Towns' drive game.
Give him a chance, you will see his crazy talent and reliability. Post-season he has had some problems for sure, I wont dispute that, but for the regular season, the dude is as consistent as it gets and is pure money when it comes to getting buckets. just put down the 20+ points every night on good efficiency, easy, no doubt about it.
I wanted to go back to the last few pages of the Part 2 thread to echo the sentiments from a fellow Timberwolves moderator.
Interestingly enough, it feels like Gersson Rosas (along with the rest of the front office) is creating a similar version of what Rosas was building in Minnesota before he was axed. I know that all of the moves are not directly attributed to Rosas, but this one certainly seems to be.
Towns is a unique player. I think it is important to prioritize the types of players you put next to him, especially in the frontcourt and at PG.
I personally draw a line from Brunson to what Rosas thought that D'Angelo Russell could be. He targeted Russell way back when to be his version of James Harden, in a sense. I see some parallels between that and what Brunson does at the PG position, though obviously Brunson is levels above.
There seem to be two methodologies of frontcourt pairings next to Towns. There are the jumbo-sized center, like he had the past few seasons in Rudy Gobert. There is also the more mobile four, who is able to play in space.
Jarred Vanderbilt played that role in Minnesota, and I see OG Anunoby as a similar type of defensive presence (again, at a higher level).
But this roster setup brought out the best in Towns offensively, while building a decent enough defense with him at center. Rebounding was an issue in that Memphis series, and I fear it could be a problem for the Knicks at some point. But Towns is crazy talented. Minnesota simply got to a point where they were at their limit of what they could probably achieve with that group.
