Karl-Anthony Towns dealing with COVID-19 surge better now than with outbreak last year

DALLAS – Last season as the Timberwolves prepared to play a game in Charlotte, the Hornets announced some players would miss that day's game and enter the league's COVID healthy and safety protocols.

Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns, who saw multiple family members die because of the virus, including his mother Jacqueline, said he felt "triggered" that night mentally and had trouble playing.

Nearly a year later, the NBA is dealing with an outbreak spurred by the omicron variant, and Towns has seen opponents and teammates hit the virus list. He said he's in a different place mentally than he was a year ago, but it is still concerning to him to see what's happening around him.

"It's pretty nerve-wracking," Towns said Sunday. "I know how my house has reacted to everything. So it's definitely a difficult situation, not only for our team … but for the entire league."

Dozens of players around the league have entered health and safety protocols in December, including five on the Wolves: Anthony Edwards, Taurean Prince, Josh Okogie, Jarred Vanderbilt and Patrick Beverley. Their opponent Sunday and Tuesday, the Mavericks, had four players in the protocols.

Commissioner Adam Silver told ESPN that the league doesn't have any plans on pausing the season as of Tuesday.

"We have, of course, looked at all the options, but frankly we are having trouble coming up with what the logic would be behind pausing right now," Silver said. "As we look through these cases literally ripping through the country, let alone the rest of the world, I think we're finding ourselves where we sort of knew we were going to get to over the past several months, and that is this virus will not be eradicated, and we're going to have to learn to live with it. I think that's what we're experiencing in the league right now."

Silver said the omicron variant has caused about "90 percent" of the cases in the league recently.

Coach Chris Finch said most of the Wolves who were in health and safety protocols were asymptomatic though a few were experiencing mild symptoms. To help reinforce the roster the Wolves called up their two-way players, guard McKinley Wright and Nathan Knight, along with signing forward Chris Silva and guard Rayjon Tucker to 10-day contracts.

Towns said Friday that despite the concern he was in a much better place in part because of the vaccines and booster shot he received.

"My world was a little different last year when that happened [in Charlotte] as well," Towns said. "Just frightened. One of the few times I can honestly say in my life I was frightened. I didn't really know what to do, I didn't know how to feel, I didn't know how my family would react. Today, a different story. We're taking really good care of ourselves. Things happen.

"I feel very confident in having got the booster right away before it was even a thing, before the NBA was really talking about it. I went and got it done."