The space of a seven-footer is never refined, always an inch taller than “normal”. Everyone has one guy they know, taller than any other, six-foot-something but not seven-feet tall. That’d be ridiculous.
So we put ‘em in shorts, teach the seven-footers how to shoot a basketball, and one seven-footer came out better than any other at shooting basketballs: Karl-Anthony Towns, self-assured to the point where he long ago pointed out which seven-footer shot basketballs best. It was him. Karl-Anthony Towns shot them best.
This is unlike Towns in most other instances, naturally garrulous but rarely self-promoting, yet intensely embarrassing upon that self-promotion. Earlier in the playoffs he claimed, in a statement we can’t quite conclude hyperbolic, that he attempts 1,500 practice jumpers during days off. The payoff, a 38% mark from the floor in Dallas’ five-game Western Conference finals demolition of the tenderfoot Timberwolves, hardly dismissed Towns’ growing group of grumblers, annoyed by his mix of clanged shots and curious charges.
However, Towns’ conclusion toward his “best shooter over seven-feet”-status wasn’t fueled by hot air. Towns’ three-point stroke (39.8% regular season, 34% in the postseason) outpaces that of seven-foot Hall of Famer and 2011 NBA champion Dirk Nowitzki (38% and 36%), Towns makes a high percentage of his long two-pointers (45%) and free throws (84%), outclassing anyone at his own eye level.
But sports ain’t after class. Sports chases a cut above the eye ahead of anything else, preferring exhibitions of pain to proficient performances. Towns is routinely derided not simply for the statement rightfully regaling his shooting prowess, but also the time he told a reporter he watched gorilla fight videos before games to embolden himself ahead of action. An utterly absurd comment from any person and even some athletes, certainly from Towns himself, as this 28-year old gives the impression of someone more at home watching clips of kittens tumbling safely down carpeted stairwells.
Then there is that nickname, KAT, an unfortunate acronym in the land of Finding One’s Innermost Dog.
The “gorilla fight” comment belies the sort of sports consumer Towns tries desperately to impress, but KAT’s never getting over that nickname. All-Star teammate Anthony Edwards is lazily tagged “Ant” by media for similar reasons but at least ants can lift larger than their own weight, build farms and cool hills and hovels while we watch. All a KAT is good for is walking along a coffee table they’re not supposed to be on, dutifully pawing each of the table’s contents toward the floor.
None of this, even the betrayal of personal YouTube history, is Towns’ fault. Yet his rather regal name and wingspan render KAT the NBA’s chief print media punching bag. Stateside edition, at least, French frontcourt counterpart Rudy Gobert pulled the gold medal from the international ranks long ago.
Rare is the NBA observer, especially the NBA observer who once played in the NBA, to resist bellyaching over a seven-footer. Moaning over the way the seven-footer refuses camping by the goal and tossing down spectacular dunk after dunk, as the observer would if afforded that specific height.
Yet KAT is a shooter, and like most modern NBA players, an uneasy low post scorer. Cranks love to bemoan this particular lost art without revealing the reason why low post scoring is a forgotten brushstroke by rule. The NBA outlawed free and easy low post access in changing the league’s zone defense codes following its charmless 2000-01 campaign.
The reaction to that low point cost the NBA its low post, yet it added nearly 20 more points per game (94.8 in 2000-01 to 114.2 in 2023-24) to its average ledger. The sons and daughters of the generation which grew up dribbling around the three-point line learned to step behind it and fire, figures like Karl-Anthony Towns do not play incorrectly while eschewing a low-percentage two-point look from inside, over six zoned-up arms, in exchange of a relatively clean three-point launch from 25 feet. Where missing six of 10 is still very good.
That’s how innovators appear, though. Confident, sloppy, inaccurate while profiting via volume. It didn’t help KAT’s cause that he sprung on a left knee meniscus which was surgically repaired in March.
It is the same setback Dennis Rodman suffered in the same space ahead of the 1997 playoffs, his second with the Bulls, when upon return he was so ineffective he endured a creation called a “Jason Caffey” outplaying and eventually starting over him. It’s the same injury Sports Illustrated spun tears over when Magic Johnson missed months to its tear during Magic’s sophomore NBA season, the same injury which kept Kawhi Leonard out of the 2023 playoffs, and the same surgery which limited Joel Embiid to a heaving approximate of himself in 2024’s first-round loss to New York.
Embiid’s cool, though. A little corny but with little of the cringe encircling Karl-Anthony Towns, whose own introduction to the league was that of a shoulders-outta-step schoolboy reporter. KAT won’t earn validation until his forearms are bruised with the dunks he blistered on his way toward the NBA finals MVP. Detractors would still hiss over KAT, cry over Edwards during that imagined turn, demand the 6ft 5in Ant win MVP over Towns. Ant is cool, KAT is a seven-footer.
Who are never cool, Shaquille O’Neal’s sneakers never outsold Penny Hardaway’s, two decades ago there were more Steve Nash jerseys floating around Dallas’ lower bowl than Dirk Nowitzki threads, Dirk didn’t make David Letterman’s program but Steve sure did.
It’s a story as old as pro basketball, why would you root for Slater Martin when George Mikan is right there? George Mikan may have been the best player in basketball, but he wasn’t “right there”, rather, Mikan was a foot farther up in the sky. Slater Martin was 5ft 10in, a height we understand.
Minnesota lost their West finals appearance because their league-leading defense turned average inside its worst possible moments, Towns had little to do with this disadvantage. What he did was shoot his team out of contention in spots, working as if he’d read the criticism and believed every word, artlessly lunging for referee whistles and missing more than 70% his three-pointers against Dallas. Redemption must wait another round.
Which confounds. Scoring guards are ubiquitous, fans reflexively comparing similarly-sized swingmen with others from basketball’s past, seeking to fill that cast after the old clay dries out. In Karl-Anthony Towns, the sport owns something unique in personality and practice, a seven-footer to outplay participants from all five other positions on the floor.
We know how it is with new sounds. In 20 years, they’ll all swear they were KAT’s biggest fans.
