Barbara Barker: Knicks must make Karl-Anthony Towns their No. 1 concern
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns puts up a shot defended by Rockets forward Kevin Durant in the first half of an NBA basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
There. Mike Brown finally said it.
After two-thirds of the season, the Knicks’ coach fully articulated what everyone watching his team this season already knew. Karl-Anthony Towns may be an All-Star, but he is the second most important All-Star on this team.
When it comes to shots and opportunities in this offense, Jalen Brunson is going to get the most, and Towns will come in somewhere behind him.
Brown made that clear before Saturday night’s game against Houston when he was asked how he assessed his center’s up-and-down play and the fact that he doesn’t always seem to know where he is in the offense.
“I look at KAT and he’s probably right where he should be, right?” Brown said. “Maybe he should be the leading scorer? I don’t know, but for sure the second-leading scorer. He’s that. He gets the second-most field-goal attempts, right? Behind Jalen . . . The No. 1 guy is going to get the most stuff because he’s the No. 1 guy. The No. 2 guy is going to get the second-most stuff because he’s the No. 2 guy.”
Entering the game, Towns had attempted 728 field goals in Brown’s offense. At the same point last season? He had attempted 880. That’s an average of three fewer shots a game than he averaged last season, which might go a long way toward explaining why he doesn’t seem all that happy in Brown’s offense.
That unhappiness has reared its ugly head again and again, most recently in the Knicks’ ugly loss to the Pistons on Thursday. Against a team missing both of its centers, Town scored two points and took three shots in the first half. The Knicks fell behind by 10 at the half and went on to lose for the third time in three games to Detroit this season.
Is it a coincidence that Towns is having one of the worst seasons of his career? His marks of 19.8 points per game and 34.9% shooting from three-point range heading into Saturday night were the lowest since his rookie season. His 46.7% shooting from the field was the lowest of his 11-year career.
If the Knicks really think they can be the last team standing in the Eastern Conferfence, they are going to have to find a way to get Towns more involved. You don’t have to read deeply in between the lines to see that he’s not happy and hasn’t been all season.
So who is to blame for the Towns problem? And what can be done to address it? There are at least three suspects, and you can bet at least one of them will take the fall if the Knicks don’t find a way to fix this and bow out early in the playoffs.
Let’s start with Towns . . .
He may not like it, but he needs to accept his place in the hierarchy and make the most out of the opportunities he has. While a big part of the blame for that has to be on Brown, Towns is an elite player who has played for multiple coaches. He is capable of finding ways to be aggressive and ways of using his strength and shooting skills to make things happen.
Instead, listening to Towns’ comments after the loss to the Pistons, one gets the feeling that he’s found it easier to pout about an offense he doesn’t like than to aggressively try to find ways to operate in it.
“Our offense is our offense,” Towns said. “It’s been that way all year. Regardless of who’s in the game or not in the game,we run the system that we have implemented for our team to the best of our abilities.”
Which brings us to Brown . . .
Brown has been saying all season that Towns’ role in his offense clearly had the highest learning curve. At this point, it’s clear that the curve is too steep.
Great coaches adapt their style to the players they have and the teams they are playing. Brown did say before Saturday night’s game that they have made modifications in the offense to accommodate Towns.
Still, the Knicks had a golden opportunity to use Towns to exploit a huge mismatch in Thursday’s game against Detroit with te Pistons down two centers as Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart were serving suspensions. Rather than jump out on the Pistons, the Knicks ran a first-half offense in which Towns took three shots and scored two points.
Don’t forget Leon Rose . . .
Rose’s two most significant moves as president? Trading for Towns before last season and firing Tom Thibodeau after last season and replacing him with Brown.
Right now, the jury remains out on both.
The Knicks lost some toughness when they got rid of Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, but it seemed like a decent gamble at the time. The hiring of Brown is a tougher one, given that he runs an offense that doesn’t match the strengths of his players.
Of course, the best way for everyone to keep his job is to figure this team out before it snowballs. There’s still a little time.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
