KAT STATS About Karl-Anthony Towns
Age: 22 (born Nov. 25, 1995, in Edison, N.J.)
High school: St. Joseph in Metuchen, N.J., where he won three state titles.
College: Kentucky, for one season (2014-15). Towns averaged 10.3 points and 6.7 rebounds but played only 21 minutes per game for a balanced Wildcats team that won its first 38 games before losing to Wisconsin in the NCAA semifinals.
NBA draft: Towns was taken first overall by the Timberwolves in the 2015 draft and was the NBA Rookie of the Year.
Career stats: In his third season, he has career averages of 21.4 points, 11.5 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game. He has not missed a game in his career.
Contract: Towns is in the third year of a four-year, $25.7 million rookie contract. His salary this season is $6.2 million.
On Twitter and Instagram: @karltowns
Did You Know?
• He proudly calls himself a "mama's boy" and says his view of the world broadened when he accompanied his mother to her home in the Dominican Republic for the first time when he was a teenager.
• He gave up basketball for a year in his youth to concentrate on baseball — the national sport of his mother's homeland — but grew too tall to deny basketball.
• Another reason he might have chosen basketball over baseball: It was hard to find cleats to fit his massive feet.
• A homebody at heart, he has embraced his KAT nickname: "I'm a different animal, I'm a different KAT. I'm a lion on the court. I'm more of a house cat off it."
• Former NBA player and current skills coach Don MacLean on Towns: "He's really nice. You think this kid is pulling your leg. It's not. It's genuine."
• Towns' "KAT Team" family foundation has teamed with New Jersey's REED Academy, a nonprofit school for children with autism, to raise money with every point he scores for the academy and the foundation's scholarship program.JERRY ZGODA
