Houston Rockets: 5 keys to series vs. Timberwolves

4. Exploit Towns’ weakness

For a third-year All-Star, Karl-Anthony Towns has very few weaknesses in his game, but there are two that the Rockets must take advantage of.

First, Towns is a weak defender. Outside of Clint Capela doing his thing, this is where rostering a scoring big man like Nene will become useful. If coach Mike D’Antoni should chose to play Nene against Towns in certain situations, he may be able to quickly help keep the score differential comfortable for the Rockets.

Secondly, Towns has been shooting the 3-ball a lot this season and connecting on an impressive 42.1 percent of those looks. While that is great for Towns’ development, if the Rockets can find a way to take Towns out of his comfort zone, particularly the paint, and make him shoot 3s, he will be greeted with the likes of Chris Paul, Trevor Ariza, Luc Mbah a Moute P.J. Tucker. If the Rockets can make Towns uncomfortable at the arc, they can limit the damage he can do.

That damage, by the way, is significant: Against Clint Capela, KAT’s averages are 25.7 points and 15 rebounds per game in his career. Those stats easily beat his career averages of 21.6 points and 11.7 rebounds per game.

While this proves that he can do his damage, he has lost in all 10 of those contests historically.