Timberwolves' Towns Unanimous Choice For NBA Rookie Of The Year
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The NBA announced Monday morning that Minnesota Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns is the unanimous choice for the league's Rookie of the Year.
The announcement had about all the suspense of finding out whether or not water is wet after the kind of year he had. But Towns knows a thing or two about expectations, and how to manage them. And he managed to both meet them, and raise them, as he accepted his award Monday.
"When you're a rookie I think the biggest thing is the pressure. There's a lot of pressure. I had additional pressure from being the number one pick and I'm just so blessed," Towns said.
"This is a landmark in my career, but it's not the last one. I plan to continue to grow as a player, continue to improve and continue to bring Minnesota to the place it should be as a playoff contender and as a championship contender."
When asked about reasonable expectations for next season, Towns said nothing was out of reach.
"Everything's reasonable. Nothing's off the table," he said. "I see nothing but aspirations to be in the playoffs next year and trying to make a run."
New Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau is already well into his video evaluations of his new team, and what he saw last year from Towns, as it did for most of us, really impressed him.
"The thing that stood out to me was, his skill set is very unusual for a guy that size, and how unselfish he is," Thibodeau said. "So not only excelling individually, but also bringing out the best in the people around him."
"I woke up early today, before everything happened today, and I was up very early about 6:15 in the morning working out, getting ready for next season already. It starts now," Towns said.
Towns becomes the second straight player to win the award after Andrew Wiggins won it last year. The Timberwolves acquired Wiggins in a trade that sent Kevin Love to Cleveland.
Towns is the fifth player in the last 32 years to be the unanimous choice for the Rookie of the Year. Damian Lillard was the most recent to achieve that in the 2012-13 season. Towns received all 130 first-place votes and 650 points from a panel of writers and broadcasters across the U.S. and Canada.
Towns led all qualified rookies in scoring with 18.3 points per game, rebounding with 10.5 per game and field goal percentage (54.2 percent). He also led rookies with 51 double-doubles and 32 minutes per game and was second in blocks with 1.68 per game. He was the only rookie to start all 82 games this season.
He earned the Western Conference Rookie of the Month award six straight times from November to April. He was the No. 1 overall draft pick by the Timberwolves after the team won the NBA Draft lottery. The pick proved to be a no-brainer as Towns set Timberwolves season rookie records in points (1,503), rebounds (855) and blocks (138).
The award comes with a KIA Sorento, which Towns will donate to the Minnesota Chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
