The KAT-rospective, Part V: Fully Himself

Thilo Latrell Widder concludes his five-part series with a look back at KAT's best - and final - act in Minnesota.

Hello! As we get set for Knicks Hawks Game 2, what better time to conclude the 5-part KAT Postseason retrospective from guest contributor Thilo Latrell Widder. As a reminder, you can check out all of Thilo's coverage of the Timberwolves at Canis Hoopus. Who knows...perhaps we're in store for a Knicks Wolves Finals six week from now. A man can dream...

For my money, Wolves vs Nuggets was the single best playoff series of 2024.

Many of you will likely lean towards the Knicks facing the 76ers in the first round, but despite the late game heroics, I don't think anything can compare to a seven-game series between two teams that have each other woven into their DNA.

What do I mean by that? Well, do you remember part one of this series? The series against the Rockets where the Wolves got demolished in five disgusting games? Minnesota made the playoffs that year on the last game of the season. Game 82, as we call it, came down to the Nuggets and the Wolves. The Nuggets, on a six game win streak, had done everything they needed to with the postseason on the line. The Wolves, in free fall from the third seed, had barely been playing .500 basketball in the previous 20 games.

The Wolves won that game in overtime 112-106, thanks to the heroics of one Taj Gibson1. The Wolves found themselves in the playoffs and sent their own first round pick to the Atlanta Hawks as part of a previously agreed upon deal for Adreian Payne (RIP). The Nuggets would find themselves with the 14th pick, where they would miraculously land the once top prospect of the class, Michael Porter Jr.

If the Nuggets would've won that game, the Wolves keep that lottery protected first. The Nuggets end up stuck with one of the wings taken in the 20s, say Anfernee Simons or (god forbid) Dzanan Musa instead.

Who knows if Porter overcomes the catastrophic back injury, or if the Wolves even would've taken a medical redshirt player in the first place, but he would not have been a Nugget.

A few years later, it was Porter's presence on the wing that allowed Denver to move off of long-time Nuggets like Will Barton and Gary Harris to bring in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Aaron Gordon.

The Wolves also traded out of the pick two slots ahead of where the Nuggets took Christian Braun, where they took the similarly sized, similarly mocked Jake Laravia, who they sent to Memphis.

When the Nuggets won their first and only championship in franchise history, their path led them through the Wolves once again. While Minnesota's team was depleted with injury, it was those moves that created the Nuggets' death lineup of Jamal Murray, KCP, Porter, Gordon and Jokić.

On the other side of things, the Wolves' first step in rebuilding after the disastrous end of the Jimmy Butler era was a full scale exodus of players at the 2019 trade deadline, after which all but two players from the Thibs era were gone, and in came some castaways of the Nuggets' recent drafts. Malik Beasley, Juancho Hernangomez, and Jarred Vanderbilt would all go on to play roles as part of the Gersson Rosas Timberwolves. Hell, two of them were a big part of the rotation against Memphis.

Then, when new ownership came in and wanted a trusted leader in the front office, it was the Wolves who poached GM Tim Connelly from the Nuggets. Connelly immediately traded Beasley and Vanderbilt as part of the package for Rudy Gobert.

These are teams that define each other, with both choosing to build around the big men they had drafted when outside noise suggested otherwise. They are Mr. Glass and David Dunn. Unbreakable and Elijah Price. They caused each other, two sides of a snake eating its own tail.

And if that wasn't enough, these were two teams that could not stand one another. The word "rival" gets thrown around a lot, but these are in-division rivals who cannot seem to find a way to stay apart.

We are going to hop straight into this series at its end, but also at its climax: Game 7. The Wolves refused to matchup with the Nuggets along positional titles, instead leaving KAT on Jokić and allowing Gobert to act as a roamer, moving off of Aaron Gordon.

We are going to abbreviate this review even more. We are going to go directly to the start of the second half. The Wolves were down 20 points. In my best SB Nation Rewinder voice - ahem - welcome to a moment in history.

This was the crowning moment of the Wolves franchise. Sure, we have KG standing on the scorer's table, after beating the Sacramento Kings, but this? This was an entire team playing at a championship level. There was no Kobe and Shaq waiting. There was real hope here.

And the person at the center of it was Karl-Anthony Towns.

10 minutes left, it's a KAT dime to a Gobert open dunk. Decisive. Quick. Instinctive. Nine minutes, 30 seconds, KAT forces MPJ into a Gobert contest and then comes away from the scrum with the defensive rebound. Seven minutes, 50 seconds, Towns draws a foul on Aaron Gordon after beating Jokić off the dribble. Seven minutes, nine seconds, Karl fights through a Gordon screen to contest a Jokić three. He misses. Rebound Gobert. Six minutes, 55 seconds, Towns runs a pick and roll with Gobert, finds Ant for an open three that comes up short. Five minutes, 50 seconds, Ant gets doubled, finds KAT, who swings the ball around the outside for an open Mike Conley three.

By that point, the 20-point lead the Nuggets held had evaporated. It's down to six. Over the course of that five minute run, Denver had zero made field goals. And Towns, a player defined by loud yelps and quiet, yet overspoken absences, made, by my count, at least six plays that kickstarted that run.

Maybe six huge plays in five minutes should be expected of a superstar. Maybe the bar was set too low. Maybe you'd rather I highlight the scoring runs he would go on. But I think that if this deep dive has taught us anything, it's that to view KAT the way you would any other star is to fail him as an individual.

If you think that way, it's fine. I have admitted my soft spot for the man many, many times. However, there's something perfect about Karl quieting the part of him that demanded he be at the center of everything.

Ted Lasso has this arc with Jamie Tartt, a stuck up, self centered forward who cared only about his own goals. While KAT has always been a wonderfully kind person, there's something like that here.

There were demands to be highlighted, failed costars that he recruited - ones who wouldn't take his shine - and one eventual one that did take over.

There were boastful showings, a 60-point game that ended with a benching because as much as KAT could score, he could also get tunnel vision.

There were so many past versions of KAT, all compiling in this moment.

The loud version of KAT is his most volatile. It's either great or terrible, with little in between. It's how he was seen as a superstar in 2017 and how he crashed to the floor as a joke in 2019. By contrast, the quietest instance of KAT was the one whose highlights are six impactful plays, headlined by two points at the line and a couple of assists and rebounds.

If you want to compare points, rebounds and assists, KAT is not the player to do that with. No version of him will be. He didn't have the skill or records of Joel Embiid. He didn't have the awards of Nikola Jokić. He didn't have the ring of Anthony Davis. But he is unquestionably one of the best bigs in the NBA.

Especially when he played like himself. Not who anyone, including himself, thought he should be, but just as himself.

Oh, and if you want loud KAT, you only needed to watch a little longer.

Layup. Freethrows. Layup. End of third quarter. Nuggets lead is one.

The Wolves went on a 28-9 run in this KAT stint, a 19 point swing that clawed the Wolves back. When Towns left the court and Rudy Gobert entered alongside Naz Reid, that momentum instantly disappeared. With two minutes wasted revving their tires in the mud, here comes Karl-Anthony Towns.

We get yet another stretch of what is, on paper, impactless basketball. There are tough, contested rebounds. There are swing passes. There is good defense on Nikola Jokić. There are, however, no point scored.

KAT comes back out with the Wolves in front by four after a three and a half minute stretch. Naz Reid then does just as Towns did. Two blocks on Jokić and a thunderous putback to push the lead to seven, and then a pass to Edwards in the corner to extend it to ten, the biggest Wolves lead of the night. Towns re-enters the game for Gobert after the latter fouls out.

When someone asks you when you fell in love with basketball, what do you say? Do you tell them it was as a kid, playing with friends? Do you detail something you watched, the effects of childlike glee that it brought? Or do you just show them?

I watched this game with a blood oximeter on my finger, against the advice of my doctor, with a friend besides me tracking my heart rate. It was two days after I was briefly admitted into Strong Hospital in Rochester for a serious cardiac event.

With my heart rate at a 97 (way higher than it should've been) and my blood oxygenation level at 89 percent (way, way lower than it should've been), I watched Towns take flight to win this game.

43.3 seconds remained. Mike Conley puts up a layup. 42.7 seconds. KCP fails to box out. 42.2 seconds. Towns throws down what I think is the loudest putback I have heard in Wolves history. 41.7 seconds. The lead is seven.

As far as the dunk goes, you can't even hear it on the broadcast. It's not even as loud as the self-alley Jaden McDaniels attempts to throw himself in the closing moments.

But make no mistake, it was loud to Wolves fans.

If this were a fair story, the Wolves win the title after this point. KAT completes a wonderful image rehabilitation, Chris Finch attends the parade in a wheelchair but still drinks beers the way a dad does on a lawn chair, and Anthony Edwards says something ridiculous.

If this was a heartwarming story, we'd get some element of that, some proof that this game and this moment was enough to change everything, that this core could win it all and that they did at some point.

If this were anyone but KAT's story, we would offer more respect and appreciation to a capricious player that had finally settled into himself.

He not only made a home, but he built what home was to him on an NBA court. That dunk was the final nail in the roof. He finished the sheathing all the way up to the weather vane that pointed not north, south, east or west, but firmly forward.

Once more unto the breach. That's what this story should have been.

Instead, the Wolves lost Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals off of a backbreaking three over Rudy Gobert. They lost Game 2 because of a missed out of bounds call that went in favor of the Dallas Mavericks. The Wolves went down 3-0 despite a total margin of only 14 points across those games. They'd go on to lose in five.

How much is there to tell about that series? We said it last time, sometimes you're just born unlucky. Nothing you can do can change that fact.

Towns' last game in a Minnesota Timberwolves uniform would be a loud one, a 28-point, 12-rebound showing with awful shooting splits in a 21 point loss. I think by that point, the Wolves realized they had been victims of fortune.

From the outside looking in, the issues with Towns' time in New York have always amounted to problems with comfort and identity. It's sad that the second KAT settled into who he was, he was uprooted.

To that end, I wonder if Towns has the same support here that he did in Minneapolis. While Jalen Brunson is also the top option to support, he doesn't vouch for KAT in the same way Ant did. Hell, the entire Wolves roster boycotted Inside the NBA in protest of their treatment of both star bigs.

The all-time greats will play well wherever they are, but not everyone is an all-time great. He's just great. And to be great, you need the right environment and the right outlook. If someone can turn the Minnesota Timberwolves around, it's probably not a question of outlook.

Accountability comes in many different forms. I think Knicks fans have seen accountability for KAT as a sneer. To complain is to care in the world of New York basketball. I don't think that works for Towns.

I hope Knicks fans can learn to understand him. Maybe that's a stupid ask. These players earn a lot of money and many fans think that complaints are deserved when the price tag is that large. But I promise you, I implore you to try.

There is a championship level number two in there somewhere. I've seen it. The world has seen it.

For that version of KAT to come back, we need him to be comfortable being quiet again. When that happens, if it hasn't already, the Knicks have as good a shot as anyone to add a third Larry O'Brian Trophy to their mantle.

And I'd be out there to celebrate KAT. Without any bitterness in me.