Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns joins 6 teammates in COVID health and safety protocols
Minnesota star Karl-Anthony Towns joined six other Timberwolves teammates on Thursday night when he entered the league’s COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
Towns, who was hit harder by the coronavirus pandemic than perhaps anyone else in the NBA, was then ruled out for their game against the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City.
Can’t catch a f*%@ing break!
— Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) December 23, 2021
Towns has averaged 24.5 points and 9.1 rebounds per game this season, his seventh in Minnesota after the Timberwolves took him with the No. 1 overall pick in 2015. After Thursday night, the Timberwolves will have three days off before starting a back-to-back with the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks.
Patrick Beverley, Anthony Edwards, Josh Okogie, Taurean Prince, Jarred Vanderbilt and McKinley Wright IV are the other Timberwolves players in protocols.
Karl-Anthony Towns’ mom, 6 family members died due to COVID
Towns revealed last year that seven of his family members, including his mom Jacqueline, died due to the coronavirus in 2020. Jacqueline was a nurse, and was placed in a medically induced coma after suffering from the virus for more than a month.
Towns then announced in January that he had also tested positive for the coronavirus, something that knocked him out for 13 games last season. That experience, he said at the time, was incredibly scary and even made him feel guilty about receiving treatment.
To add to his year, Towns then revealed that he had been briefly hospitalized after being hit by a drunk driver in Southern California in 2020.
Naturally, Towns has been extremely outspoken about taking the coronavirus seriously, wearing masks receiving the vaccine.
“I’m obviously a strong believer in the vaccine,” he said earlier this year. “I’ve been through so much and it would be kind of contradictory to not be on the pro-vaccine side … [People can] make their own decisions on their own bodies and their own families. I have no ill will towards that. The only thing I would say is just don’t give me a bulls*** excuse why [you don’t get the vaccine].”
