Minnesota Timberwolves, Anthony Towns

IT WAS DARK on the Minnesota Timberwolves’ plane when it took off from San Antonio the night of March 14 bound for Minneapolis. But it wasn’t particularly quiet.

There was no chance of that from the game that star center Karl-Anthony Towns had just had, scoring a career-high 60 points in a win against the Spurs to continue Minnesota’s post-All-Star Game run.

The entire trip from the arena to the airport had been a team party of sorts, with veteran point guard Patrick Beverley sending every player, coach and staff member to the back of the team bus to, in his words, “shake hands with greatness.” When the team arrived at the terminal, Beverley made sure no one got off the bus before Towns so they could applaud him as he walked down the aisle.

After all Towns has been through – the death of his mother, Jackie, and seven other family members from COVID-19 and his own battle with the virus that left him hospitalized – the three-time All-Star wanted to share the moment with the teammates who helped him through it.

“If I learned anything in my life, it’s that nothing is guaranteed. So I always try to tell people, ‘Hey, I appreciate you or thank you,'” Towns says.

After everyone boarded the plane, Towns stood up to address the team:

“I just wanted to say, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart, I wouldn’t have wanted to do this 60-point game with anyone but you guys.

“My brothers. I appreciate you guys making this so special.”

The team clapped for him again, excitement overflowing through all of them, until it was finally time to dim the cabin lights and take off.

Towns put on a hat and a pair of headphones, hoping to calm down and maybe take a nap on the flight home.

He began scanning the hundreds of text messages he had received after the game from league friends and family members who had watched from afar. Then he began to write…

“I was so focused on the moment that I looked up my mom’s number to text her,” Towns says.

Halfway through the text, he held back and began to cry.

“This was a moment for us,” Towns says. “She would have loved it.”

IT’S BEEN almost two years since Jacqueline Cruz-Towns’ death, and while there are fewer such moments than before, the pain is never far away. As tears welled in her eyes, Towns pulled down her hat and covered her face.

You just can’t be around Towns, or watch him play during this resurgent season for the Timberwolves, who have won 11 of 15 since the All-Star Game break and are in seventh place in the Western Conference, without thinking about the burden he has carried.

His mother’s death by COVID-19 was so public, so heartbreaking, always in the spotlight.

He had to grieve with the world watching, while trying to keep his family together, be the leader of the Timberwolves through a scandal that led to the firing of team president Gersson Rosas, and maintain a stellar level of play on the court.

After Jacqueline’s death, Towns says he first found himself looking to channel his grief into basketball.

“It was like … I’ll go crazy and put all that energy into my game, but when I looked to basketball to give me that energy, I didn’t have it.

“My mom was the purpose of me even playing basketball,” he says. “So when she passed away, I had to go back to finding a purpose. I had to find what was going to be the reason why I wanted to go every day and put my body, my mind and my spirit through all this stress. Why would I do this?

“It took time and a lot of self-reflection.”

IT IS AT THIS point in Towns’ story when people often divide into two groups: those who have lost someone as close to them as Towns and understand the pain he has experienced, and those who have not.

Those who haven’t might try to understand. But Towns found that they simply cannot relate in the same way, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.

You don’t handle the loss of a parent, Towns explains. You just learn to feel it, honor it, and eventually embrace new things that make you feel good again. But the mourning never goes away.

Towns has inadvertently surrounded himself with people who have experienced grief as he has. His agent, Jessica Holtz, lost her mother when she was 9 years old. Timberwolves coach Chris Finch lost his mother to cancer a few years ago. His girlfriend, Jordyn Woods, lost her father to pancreatic cancer in 2017.

“Some days are still very difficult for me,” Woods says. “And that’s the way it’s going to be your whole life. When you lose a parent, that’s the way it is. There are times, like when he scores 60 or wins the three-point contest (at the NBA All-Star Game) where probably the only other person he could think of and wanted to be with was his mother, who was his biggest supporter.”

Woods, a model and actress who has appeared on several television shows, and Towns were friends for years before they began dating. They met through mutual friends in Los Angeles, bonded over a competitive UNO card game and built the kind of friendship that turned into a deep and supportive romance over time.

“I would say we were best friends. And then his mother passed away and something changed,” Woods says. “When you go through a lot with someone, you can relate on a deeper level to the fact that I lost my father when I was 19.”

Woods began spending more time with Towns in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. When he wasn’t with him, he found himself following his games on TV or on a game tracker. She would study the matchups before games and the stat sheet afterward.

“She doesn’t even know how to play, but she comes to me and says, ‘Hey, I saw this clip on Twitter. I think you should watch it. This guy made this move,'” Towns says. “It’s crazy now how my girl loves basketball as much as my mom does.

It helped that in the early stages of their romance, people in Minnesota didn’t pry or stalk them like the paparazzi did in Los Angeles.

“I mean, I’ve been in Target with Jordyn Woods having Jedi fights, legitimately pulling lightsabers out of the toy section and running around, and no one stopped us,” Towns says. “People saw us and never thought anything of it or didn’t want to be rude.”

THAT NIGHT, FINCH didn’t see Towns crying on the team plane. But the second-year head coach noticed something different about him.

“He spent most of the flight walking back and forth, talking to people,” Finch recalls. “He was obviously excited after those 60 points, but he was probably just looking for that human touch, that human interaction.”

“Having lost a parent myself, you have these special moments and you want to share them with the most significant people in your life, but those people are no longer there. That has to be a very bittersweet thing.”

It’s impossible to understand the bonds that have developed between Finch and his superstar center without starting with the empathy they’ve shown for each other.

For Finch, the empathy Towns showed toward him when he first took over in February 2021 set the tone for everything that has followed.

“He was the first one to call me when I was offered the job,” Finch recalled. “He basically said he would do whatever I needed him to do. He was very welcoming, always supportive, even before he knew me or knew anything about me. His approach to this situation was probably as important as anything else. And he didn’t have to do that. He could have been much more cautious, but I don’t think that’s the way he is in his heart. I think he’s an open, warm, welcoming, genuine, caring person.”

Like everyone else in the basketball world, Finch knew that Towns had lost his mom the year before and how deeply that had affected him. He also knew, from his own experience, how long it takes to process something like that.

“I came into his life at a time when he was obviously just trying to get over it, more than anything,” Finch said. “And I was just trying to establish a relationship with him as a coach, but at the same time trying to understand everything that he had gone through. And not just, obviously, the loss of his mother, but also the basketball side of it. I had to understand the basketball trauma, so to speak.”

The basketball trauma Finch describes: five coaches in Towns’ first six seasons; the 2015 death of former Wolves president of basketball operations Flip Saunders, who had recruited Towns just months earlier; a basketball reputation diminished by failed partnerships with Andrew Wiggins, Jimmy Butler and Tom Thibodeau; the sale of the franchise in 2021; the scandal that toppled Rosas on the eve of training camp and ushered in another administration; and all of that not to mention being the best player and leading a team that had amassed an average winning percentage of just 39% during those first six years.

“There were a lot of circumstances that made Minnesota more of a ‘reality show’ than a basketball team,” Towns said.

“But I think we’re incorporating the basketball part now.”