On his first official day as a Timberwolf, Karl-Anthony Towns cut quite a figure as he walked the skyways of downtown Minneapolis, 7 feet worth of hope for a franchise and a city that had been suffering for so long.

Jacqueline Cruz followed her son every step of the way, just as she has his entire life. Somehow, some way, a Dominican woman who couldn’t be taller than 5-7 walked even taller than the No. 1 overall pick she and her husband raised in Piscataway, New Jersey. The smile never left her face as she watched fans and team employees crowd around her son and fellow rookie Tyus Jones and open their arms to welcome them to their new home.

After the introductory press conference, the Towns family was given its first tour of the Timberwolves practice facility. It is a sprawling space, with two full courts buttressed by executive offices for basketball operations on one side and the business operations on the other. Jackie and Karl, Karl-Anthony’s father, bounced off of the walls as they walked around the newly opened space where Karl-Anthony would be spending most of his time. Big Karl marveled over a golf bag with the Wolves logo on it. Team officials provided the family with polo shirts from the prior season.

It was a whirlwind day for a close-knit family that was experiencing the early days of its NBA dream. As the afternoon came to a close, Jackie sat down on a bench near the locker room to gather herself.

“He toured this beautiful facility and he told me, ‘Mom, this is the place for me,'” Cruz said.

Big Karl was looking at the weight room and all the bells and whistles there for Karl-Anthony to work on his game. KAT was eyeing up the rims he would be shooting on for countless hours during practice. In the biggest moment of her son’s life to that point, the one that would launch a career that has included a Rookie of the Year award, two All-Star berths and a $158 million second contract, all Jackie was worried about was if her son felt comfortable in his new home.

In the big, boisterous, basketball-centered Towns family, Jackie was the emotional centerpoint, the light, the beating heart that made its world go ’round. And now she is gone, leaving a gaping hole not only in the Towns family, but also in an organization that had grown so used to seeing her in arenas at home and on the road, decked out in bedazzled Timberwolves gear and cheering her son and his teammates with the full-throated passion that only a mother can summon.

The Timberwolves announced on Monday that Jackie died from complications stemming from her battle with COVID-19. It was the heartbreaking culmination of a month-long struggle with a virus that has claimed more than 20,000 lives in the United States and been particularly deadly in the New York-New Jersey area the Towns family calls home. Karl-Anthony put out a video in March saying that Jackie had been placed on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma as doctors tried to help her with the breathing issues that came as the virus escalated.

There was some belief that Jackie was responding to the treatments she was getting, but a roller coaster ride through the illness took another wicked turn in the last two days before she succumbed at the age of 58.

To say this loss has rocked the family would be the understatement of all understatements. Karl-Anthony has serenaded his mother as the driving force behind his climb to the NBA. If he got his skill from his father’s teaching, he got the emotion to which he credits his success from her. She is the one who came to his aid, hurling invective at Joel Embiid when the two stars tussled in Philadelphia in November.

She was the one sitting in the front row and shedding tears when Karl-Anthony accepted the Rookie of the Year award in 2016.

She was the one wearing his No. 32, cheering so loudly that Big Karl would usually choose to sit elsewhere so he could concentrate on the finer points of the game and be ready with feedback for his son when the game was over.

“She’s way too into it, bro,” Big Karl told me with a playful shake of his head in 2015. “I can’t hear myself think when I sit next to her.”

And that was just fine with Jackie.

“I’m good,” she told The Athletic’s Kyle Tucker when he covered Towns’ Kentucky Wildcats for the Louisville Courier-Journal in 2014. “I don’t want nobody to tell me I can’t stomp my feet and curse a little bit here and there.”

The men of the family are not exactly Kawhi Leonard clones. Karl and Karl-Anthony are talkers, quick to hug and eager to share laughs. But when it comes to basketball, they are more analytical in how they view it. Jackie was all heart.

You could always hear her coming before you saw her, her energy filling up any room she walked into, no matter how big, the pride she had for her son radiating from every pore. The husband and wife duo could have had their own sitcom with their back-and-forth banter and exuberance for their boy. As a young man, Karl-Anthony could have been sheepish about his parents, too cool for their involvement as he climbed the ranks to Kentucky and then the Timberwolves. But that was never the case for him.

With every award and honor he has racked up, Towns was always quick to thank his parents for their support and guidance.

“He noticed what we’ve done for him, how we’ve gone and given our all for him,” Jackie said when Towns first enrolled at Kentucky. “He noticed that. As a young man, children don’t always realize that. … That was very rewarding.”

KAT brought his family with him everywhere, games on the road, All-Star festivities, announcements for his college choice.

Stumbled on this video of Karl-Anthony Towns and his mom when he committed to Kentucky and now I'm sobbing pic.twitter.com/Rtb3Eqwxhg — Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) April 13, 2020

He called himself a mama’s boy and has surrounded himself with strong women in his personal and professional life because of the example his mother set. Towns also chose to forgo his eligibility to play for Team USA in international competition when he suited up for the Dominican Republic national team as a nod to his mother’s roots. Karl-Anthony’s interest in medicine stemmed from Jackie’s background as a nurse and he celebrated his All-Star selections with his parents before anyone else.

Congratulations to the best agent in sports Leon Rose on this amazing opportunity with the Knicks. In saying that and being raised by two powerful beautiful women, I’m excited to be helped in this journey by one of the most powerful women in sports @JHoltz pic.twitter.com/6uyPWxd5OS — Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) March 3, 2020

And for as much as Big Karl and Jackie liked to tease each other about being apart during games, they were inseparable once the final buzzer sounded. He fed off of her vibrancy. He leaned on her belief and optimism. Even when Karl-Anthony was out with injury, Karl and Jackie would hop around to arenas on the east coast to visit fellow Wildcats who were in town.

When Jackie first entered the hospital, there was optimism that she would make it through. She was too full of life, too fiery to fall like this.

“Dominican women are strong. I know they are,” Towns said in a video posted on his Instagram. “My mother is one of the strongest women I know and I know she’ll beat this. We’re going to rejoice when she does.”

Long before Jackie became sick, Karl-Anthony donated $100,000 to the Mayo Clinic to expedite testing for coronavirus. Even as the days turned into weeks, there were still glimmers of hope that Jackie would eventually be OK. The Towns family simply wouldn’t allow for any other outcome.

One of the most haunting segments of Karl-Anthony’s video post making the announcement came when he spoke about the conversation he had with her as she was going in.

“Every day I always told her how much I love her,” he said. “She was telling me things I didn’t want to hear. I dismissed some things she was saying because it was something I didn’t want to hear.”

The NBA has thrown its collective arms around the Towns family in the hours since Jackie’s death was made public. So many players and coaches had met and interacted with a woman who simply could not be ignored as soon as she stepped into the arena.

I’m so sorry @KarlTowns love you bro! Thoughts and prayer to your family. — Zach LaVine (@ZachLaVine) April 13, 2020

Ms. Jackie was an angel and we were blessed to have her in our lives. I cannot imagine the heartbreak that @KarlTowns and Karl Sr. are going through right now but my hope is we can lift them up during this time and get them through this with our thoughts and prayers. — John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) April 13, 2020

Praying for my brother Kat and his family during this time ! Love y’all 🙏🏽🙏🏽❤️ — jarrett culver (@jarrettc08) April 13, 2020

Outside of the statement the Towns family issued on Monday afternoon, they have remained quiet. They have a long road ahead of them to get through this, and one of the devastating side effects of the COVID-19 outbreak is that mass gatherings, including funerals, are being delayed right now. That makes mourning the family matriarch an even more difficult endeavor.

Unfortunately, the Timberwolves are well versed in heartbreak. Coach Ryan Saunders lost his father, Flip, in eerily similar circumstances in 2015 when Flip was being treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, suddenly took a turn for the worse and died in the hospital. Saunders and Towns are close and there is no doubt that the 24-year-old center will lean on his 33-year-old coach as he tries to navigate the heart-wrenching path that awaits.

When Karl-Anthony Towns put out the video last month letting the world know about his mother’s diagnosis, it was in part an effort to send a message to those not taking the situation seriously that there were real consequences playing out right in front of them. Now their story has a much more soul-crushing chapter to it, one that might cause some of those who continue to downplay the severity of the virus to take notice.

But that will provide little solace for Big Karl, Karl-Anthony and his sister Lachelle right now.

At some point, Karl-Anthony Towns will start taking his first steps without his mother by his side. He will quickly come to realize that the love she had for him will never go away.

(Photo: Hannah Foslien / Getty Images)