Karl-Anthony Towns says he lost seven family members to COVID-19

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With the NBA’s first regular season game just 19 days away, Karl-Anthony Towns’ spirit is naturally elsewhere.

The Timberwolves Center found out last night that he has now lost seven family members to complications from COVID-19, including his mother Jacqueline Cruz-Towns in April.

“I’ve been through a lot, obviously starting with my mom,” Towns said Friday. “Last night I got a call saying I lost my uncle. I feel like I’ve been a little life hardened and humiliated.”

The 25-year-old posted an emotional video on March 25 about his 58-year-old mother placed on a ventilator and placed in a medically induced coma from the coronavirus. She died 19 days later.

“I have seen a lot of coffins over the past seven months,” Towns said. “I have a lot of people who – in my family and my mother’s family – have contracted COVID.”

Her father also had the virus but has since recovered.

“It’s me who’s still looking for answers, I’m trying to figure out how to keep them healthy,” Towns said. “It’s just a big responsibility on me to keep my family well informed and to take whatever steps are necessary to keep them alive.”

Towns shared several videos on social media, discussing his experiences taking care of his mother and how he felt after her death. He wanted to “protect others and keep others well informed, even though I knew that was going to take me out the most emotionally that I had ever been asked to do.”

“I didn’t want people to feel what I was feeling,” Towns said. “I wanted to try and keep them from going through the ordeal and the situation I was going through. It just came from a place where I didn’t want people to feel as alone and upset as I was.”

Towns is looking forward to the new season brewing as he hasn’t played in an NBA game since February, when he injured his wrist. But it won’t be the same without his mum on the sidelines, who hardly ever missed a game. He said seeing his mom at the baseline and in the stands “having a good time watching me play” made him smile.

“It’s going to be tough to play,” Towns said. “It’s going to be hard to say it’s therapy. I do not think so [playing basketball] will never be therapy for me again. But it gives me a chance to relive good memories I had. “

More than 275,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19, according to the CDC. The CDC also announced that a record 219,187 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the United States on Thursday, bringing the total number of cases to more than 14 million.

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