Like it or not, Karl-Anthony Towns has put all of his trust in head coach Tom Thibodeau.
We know one thing: Shaquille O’Neal doesn’t think Towns should follow the game plan if it means he takes just nine shots like he did in Minnesota’s Game 1 loss to the Rockets on Sunday.
On TNT, Shaq said Towns needs to demand the ball and be the man on the team. But Shaq doesn’t coach the Wolves, and Towns is going to listen to whatever Thibodeau tells him to do.
“Whatever the game plan is, whether it’s to shoot 30 shots or shoot 5 shots, whatever the game plan is I’m going to try to stick to it as much as possible and follow it to a T,” Towns said Tuesday when asked about being more aggressive.
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Towns uttered the words “game plan” about 5 million times in his five minutes with the media, including these quotes.
- “Follow the game plan. We gotta follow the game plan. Whatever game plan is set before the game, we gotta follow it.”
- “Who’s the more disciplined team, sticks to their game plan most.”
- “We just gotta go out there and execute. We gotta go out there and execute what the game plan is.”
- “We almost won the game, gotta take it as its given. Gotta go with the flow of the game. It’s about following the game plan. We went with the flow of the game, we had ourselves a great chance to win.”
- “Our game plans were working, we cost ourselves as players, not as coaches, as players, late in the game not getting some stops.”
ESPN’s Zach Lowe noticed that Towns immediately jogged to the corner almost every time he had a smaller defender on him during Game 1, and Lowe believes it was scripted, which makes absolutely no sense to anyone except Thibodeau, apparently.
It’s great to see that Towns remains confident in the Wolves’ chances to win the series, but it’s a little alarming that the franchise player is cool with taking five shots if that’s what the coach calls for.
We’ll see what happens in Game 2 Wednesday night.
