Karl-Anthony Towns lost seven family members to Covid. He came back and shone

On 14 March 2022, Karl-Anthony Towns pirouetted, leapt and dunked his way to a 60-point performance with the grace of a ballet dancer and the strength of, well, a 7ft, 250lb NBA player. After the game, he started to text the most important person in his life: his mother, Jackie. Then he stopped himself and started to cry.

“This was a moment for us,” Towns later told ESPN. “She would’ve loved it.”

If Kyrie Irving is the NBA’s posterboy for how to get away with not taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously, then Minnesota Timberwolves star center Towns represents why it’s important that you do.

Since the start of the pandemic, Towns, who is just 26 years old, has lost Jackie and six other family members to Covid-19. His own bout with the virus left him hospitalized in January of last year. He has spoken about the grief that he went through and the need for people to get vaccinated after seeing several prominent NBA stars express their reasons for holding out.

It turned out 14 March was significant for other reasons. “Yesterday was two years to the date that my parents walked into the ER at JFK Medical Center in Edison, NJ and were admitted with COVID-19,” he wrote on Twitter the next day. “The same hospital that my mother gave me life, and tragically, the same hospital where I saw her life begin to slip away.

I say this to say…no matter what life throws at you, you can come out of it stronger. Tough times don’t last, tough people do. Miss you Momma. This game….my life…is for you ❤️