Karl-Anthony Towns’ Knee Injury Moves Western Conference Odds

UPDATE: ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reports Karl-Anthony Towns is undergoing surgery and will be reevaluated in a month.

Karl-Anthony Towns is out indefinitely after The Athletic's Shams Charania revealed the Minnesota Timberwolves big man suffered a torn meniscus in his left knee.

Towns was initially ruled out for Thursday's game against the Indiana Pacers with a sore knee before the news came out this morning. Towns has missed just two games this season but had platelet-rich plasma injections in both of his knees in 2022 after playing with soreness during that season.

The Timberwolves are tied with the Oklahoma City Thunder for the best record in the Western Conference and both teams have a one-game lead on the Denver Nuggets entering Thursday. Just five days ago, the Wolves and Thunder were both +200 to secure the top seed in the Western Conference at FanDuel behind the Nuggets who were +180. As of this morning, the Timberwolves have dropped to +350, the Nuggets are +175 and the Thunder are +155 to earn the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference.

Of course, all three teams are in the same division but those odds are have the Thunder listed as +110 favorites to win the Northwest with the Nuggets (+125) and Timberwolves (+370) trailing. The Timberwolves split their season series against the Thunder 2-2 and play the the Nuggets three more times this season after getting a win in early November. The Thunder own the tiebreaker over the Nuggets after winning the season series 3-1.

How long the Wolves will be without Towns is unknown at the moment, but of the three teams, the Timberwolves have the toughest remaining strength of schedule at .519 while the Nuggets are tied with the Boston Celtics with the easiest strength of schedule in the NBA.