Minnesota Timberwolves: 3 takeaways from 2018-19 season opener

2. A tale of two No. 1 picks

Karl-Anthony Towns had quite a rough night. His stat line (eight points, nine rebounds and three turnovers in 22 minutes) doesn’t even begin to tell the full story. He was in foul trouble the whole game and eventually would foul out with about five minutes left in the fourth quarter, but you can’t blame his lack of rhythm on foul trouble alone.

On offense, Towns took only six shots, as his aggressiveness was nonexistent. When Butler was on the court with him, KAT mostly stood around and settled for jumpers instead of forcing the action or setting up pick and rolls.

Towns’ most aggressive stretch of the game came in the second quarter while Butler was on the bench. Towns iso’ed on the right wing about 15 feet from the basket on three straight possessions … and the Timberwolves scored on just one of them. Combined with three of his six fouls coming on the offensive end (he was called for two moving screens and a forearm to Patty Mills‘s chest), Wednesday was definitely a career low point for KAT.

Defensively, Towns’ failings were almost as egregious. As usual, it wasn’t a lack of effort, but a lack of awareness that doomed him. He was constantly ball-watching and as a result kept getting turned around on rotations, which led to him overexerting himself and fidgeting like a D-II bench player with no confidence. Towns is in his fourth season now, and he is still routinely fudging basic defensive concepts.

Andrew Wiggins, on the other hand, played a promising game. Aside from his 20-point, six-rebound, three-assist performance, he was engaged throughout and actively looking to drive the ball to the hoop.

Wiggins reminded us that when he is engaged, he can do this …

and can even shoot well from behind the arc when he has space:

Of course, he also jacked up three or four deep 2-point shots with a defender draped all over him, so his offensive game wasn’t flawless last night, but we saw glimmers.