One of the NBA's rising stars has a surprising off-season hobby
Even if you don't follow the NBA, you can expect to hear a ton about Karl-Anthony Towns over the next decade or two.
Towns, who plays for the Minnesota Timberwolves, was just named NBA Rookie of the Year last month by a unanimous vote. If you didn't know, that's a pretty lofty honor. Some of the other unanimous selections were Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers, Blake Griffin of the Los Angeles Clippers and David "The Admiral" Robinson, formerly of the San Antonio Spurs. All of those guys reversed the fortunes of struggling franchises, and Towns is expected to do the same in Minnesota.
As you can see from his rookie highlight reel above, the guy is an unreal basketball player. But with his team missing the playoffs, Towns is unwinding with a different competitive pastime: virtual "Monopoly."
Yes, the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year has set up a Twitch channel and has done a few streams in the past week, mostly playing "Monopoly" with his friends, with a dash of last year's indie multiplayer gem "Duck Game" thrown in. Like any 20-year-old playing multiplayer games with his buddies, they chat it up about all the mundane things going on in their lives while Towns occasionally takes questions from viewers.
In case you were wondering, yes, Towns posted on the channel that he plans on streaming Tech Insider's current Game of the Year favorite "Overwatch" in the near future.
There's nothing particularly special about these streams besides the host. Towns is charismatic, to be sure, but you won't get much out of these streams unless you really, really like watching other people play video games. Still, it's great that Towns is having fun, and we hope more professional athletes wind down and interact with their fans in ways like this.