An ode to Karl-Anthony Towns, the most annoying guy in the NBA

Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images

Karl-Anthony Towns made us cheer, cry and cringe during the 2024 NBA playoffs.

In 2022, after walking off the court like Eva Perón as portrayed by Madonna, after finishing seventh in the West and bowing out with an unremarkable, 2-4 first round loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves Center Karl Anthony Towns took out a one-page ad that easily could’ve been an email in the Star Tribune, thanking fans for the season, and reaffirming his dedication to his team and the state of Minnesota. The ad reads like a Players Tribune post that was rejected by the site’s founder and uncredited editor-in-chief, Derek Jeter, because there were simply “too many bland cliches”.

If the ad is understandably a TL;DR situation for you, KAT walks the reader through his trajectory as an ingenue proto stretch four from New Jersey who was embraced by what we can all agree has historically been a warm and welcoming environment for outsiders, that despite the disappointing result of that season, he’d be working hard on his body and his game to do better next time. The picture accompanying the text is KAT, posing with a basketball held at his waist, an eyebrow raised, giving the camera side eye with a look he clearly believes is conveying “Let’s get to work” but is giving something closer to “I got this portrait taken at JCPenney and I’m trying really hard to look tough”. The ad, and particularly the tryhard energy in its intent and execution, is the perfect distillation of why Towns is by far, currently the most annoying player in the NBA.

As he mentioned, Karl-Anthony Towns is from Jersey, Edison to be exact, the perfect place for him to be from because North and Central Jersey tend to produce guys like Towns: The City is just an hour away, and that “there but not quite there” proximity has turned the area into a chip on your shoulder factory. Some lean into growing up in this shadow and embracing its off-state, blue-collar ethos, like Bruce Springsteen, some pretend it doesn’t exist and claim they’re actually from New York, like our old friend and KAT’s current nemesis, Kyrie Irving, and some try to make up for it, to essentially erase and remake themselves through hard work and overcompensation, like Tom Cruise, or Karl-Anthony Towns.

What makes KAT paradoxical is he probably lands somewhere around 0.1% in people who should have to try the least to be successful, on a basketball court or in life. He’s half Black and half Dominican, seven feet tall, and looks annoying — like the actor Justice Smith was rendered as a character on Brendon Small and Loren Bouchard’s squigglevision classic, Home Movies –– but he’s also objectively conventionally attractive. His dad was a coach and he was born gifted. Statistically, he’s close to the most skilled, sweet-shooting (career 40% from 3) big man who has ever played in the league (Just ask him). He’s had a charmed trajectory, a blue chip freshman at Kentucky who was drafted first overall in completely uncontroversial fashion by the Minnesota Timberwolves, and won Rookie of the Year. Over eight seasons, he has been named All-NBA third team twice, has made four All-Star teams, and won the 3-Point Competition at the 2021-2022 All-Star Weekend. When he puts his mind to it, he’s a talented rebounder and capable defender on the wing or when protecting the rim (particularly as an interchangeable component of the gigantic three-headed hydra Minnesota has assembled with Rudy Gobert and Naz Reid). If you wanted to build a stretchy big for the modern game in a lab, he would undoubtedly share many traits with KAT, or he’d just be KAT.

And yet, in his off-court persona, his on-court demeanor, and his style of play, Karl Anthony Towns is a Tim Robinson character, a doofus who acts strangely and obnoxiously, oblivious to being the butt of the joke. A player who is grating whether he is talking what he thinks is effective trash, or whining to the refs, or pouting on the sideline, or making a bizarre read when he attracts a double team, or, most famously, fouling at the worst possible moment, for no coherent reason, putting his team in the bonus and his ass on the bench when he’s needed most. Even his name is a personification, a kind of human expression of the most profoundly annoying domesticated animal.

KAT is confounding because he’s incredibly skilled and athletic but also uncoordinated, often seeming less like he’s moving on his own volition than being piloted by a small, gifted rat manipulating his body from a perch on his head, nestled inside of his hair. Or, like he’s a giant inflatable sock having air blown through his body in an effort to attract prospective buyers to a used car lot. I actually did some journalism for this piece, and reached out to two friends who are passionate Wolves fans to give me the homer perspective on what makes KAT such an irritating day-in/day-out watch, they told me, “Finch calls it ‘stray voltage’, when his arms are flailing on a drive, hooking defenders and then whining, claiming they hooked him first. Or just FALLING DOWN ON DRIVES. Seeing that, especially in close game situations, makes me want to fire him into the sun.” In other words, as we’ve already discussed, he’s a “tryhard”, which doesn’t mean “trying hard”, but trying in a transparent way that not only displays every drop of your sweat, but we see you making sure we see your sweat, like Anne Hathaway or Bradley Cooper.

My Wolves friends went on to point out there have been several motivating factors in KAT’s career that should engender some sympathy and goodwill for him, some understanding of his fundamental “KATness”: the tragic loss of family members to COVID, losing Flip Saunders, a mentor/father figure who drafted him, having Jimmy Butler and a crew of practice players rip out his and Andrew Wiggins’ beating hearts and displaying them for the world to see. And this is all valid, compelling, and tells part of the story. But I have another, overriding factor that speaks to KAT’s inherent nature, which he and many others like him can’t do much about: He’s corny. He is the latest in a lineage of guys on the team who always seem to get bagged on out of coach’s earshot the back of the bus. He’s Marlon Wayans in Above the Rim, he’s Sherryl Miller’s younger brother, he’s Dwight Howard, he’s J. Cole. I haven’t heard any evidence of this, but I know in my heart he can do that “Special Teams Special Plays Tuesday Tuesday” thing. thing verbatim and has been hoping for months someone would give him the prompt to show off. He has a goofy sense of humor, bad social instincts and no filter. It’s unfortunate and again, not his fault, but he was simply born lame.

And while it might run contrary to much of what’s written above, and is doubtful to be believed by any Wolves fans who hate-read this far, none of this is to bag on KAT. What I appreciate about him, and other annoying professional athletes, is they prove that even tall, rich, good-looking, highly coordinated superstars can also be goofy, weird and awkward. KAT and I only share one of the traits listed above, and I’ll leave it to you to guess which one it is, but it makes me feel slightly less alone.

The sudden success of this Wolves team should theoretically quiet the annoying allegations, but has instead only served to amplify them because of their unique, social experiment-like composition of personality types. On one polar end there’s KAT, and the second-most annoying player in the league, Rudy Gobert, lending the Wolves frontcourt an occasional Two Stooges-like energy. On the other, there is 22 year old Anthony Edwards, another No. 1 pick, quickly becoming the best of his generation, who immediately hijacked what was ostensibly KAT’s team with both his insane on-court theatrics, and quite simply being the closest thing sports has to Ferris Bueller. Watching him son KAT off and on the court, with the regularity of a sarcastically mean, but funny and loving, big brother, to a player who has been in the league twice as long and is six years his senior, makes my point for me in their dramatic contrast.

Their bond appears to be tight and genuine, and should be, because Anthony Edwards is smart enough to know that the Wolves’ ultimate failure or success, in this current iteration of the historically fallow franchise, rests on KAT’s broad shoulders. No clearer evidence of that can be found than their stunning Game 7 triumph over the Nuggets, featuring a historic in-game comeback and one of the craziest upsets of a defending champ we’ve seen in 20 years. Ant was fine in that game, but KAT was great, turning in a tidy 23 on 8-14 field goals, with a late putback dunk that will probably go down as the lasting image from that series, as the punctuation.

Now, just as stunningly, it will take another historic comeback for the Wolves to get back in a series with the Mavericks I can imagine few people saw as a blowout coming in. This is largely because KAT has been non-existent, a huge detriment to his team through three games, putting up shooting numbers that look like modern baseball averages and largely disappearing from a matchup that has been all Mavs thus far. In defeat, KAT has responded in typical fashion, with bewilderment, claiming to the press in a postgame interview that he’s been putting up “1500 shots a day”, or, you know, trying really hard. I cringed.