Expectations have followed Karl-Anthony Towns since he entered the league. This isn’t unique for a former No. 1 overall pick, but it always felt different with Towns.
He’s been far from a bust. Six All-Star appearances, three All-NBA selections, three trips to the conference finals. Most front offices would be beyond themselves at the prospect of drafting a player with this kind of resume. But Towns has always left people wanting more.
Historically, he’s been at his best offensively at the center position. But his physical limitations gave his teams a hard ceiling on defense when they went with this alignment. If you play him at the four spot, he tends to disappear on the offensive side of the ball. How can you build a true contender with this sort of conundrum on your hands?
Well, this postseason, Towns has given us the answer to this seemingly unsolvable riddle, and now, we’re finally getting the fully-realized version of him that we’ve all been waiting for.
Mike Brown Has Optimized Towns
A critical flaw of Towns is that he often gets tunnel vision whenever he puts the ball on the floor to attack, making it easy to load up on him without fear of him burning the extra help with a pass. Of the 161 players with at least five drives per game in the regular season, Towns touted the fourth-lowest pass rate (18.8%, per NBA.com).
However, Towns has always had a knack for feathering pretty passes in tight windows when he can survey the floor from a standstill position. To maximize this, after their Game 3 loss to the Atlanta Hawks (the inflection point of the New York Knicks’ season), head coach Mike Brown started running more five-out offense with Towns initiating from the perimeter (often referred to as “delay”).
If you spent any amount of time watching the Sacramento Kings when Brown was their coach, you’ve probably seen some form of this with Domantas Sabonis. However, it works even better with Towns on the perimeter because his all-time shooting prowess makes it so that the player guarding him (usually a center) must stay attached to him, nullifying their ability to sink back and protect the paint. Couple that with how hard it is for teams to switch off-ball screens featuring the bruising OG Anunoby and the slippery Jalen Brunson, and you have a recipe for offensive dominance (the Knicks are first in offensive rating this postseason).
Towns Deserves Some Flowers
To say that Towns is playing the best basketball of his career simply because of decisions made by his coach would be a major disservice. After all, the Cleveland Cavaliers did a great job of defanging the Knicks’ delay offense (as seen in the Knicks’ first offensive possession of the series). Yet, Towns was still immensely effective, finishing a +79 in four games. At the end of the day, Towns’ success is firmly his own doing.
For starters, quick decisions have never been a strong suit of his. Too often, it seems like he overcomplicates the game, allowing smaller players to get under his skin and bait him into silly offensive fouls, when he should just enable his blend of size, quickness, and skill to make him a walking mismatch.
Conviction has gone from a question mark to a weapon for Towns this postseason. His dribbles per touch are the lowest they’ve ever been, evidence of his decisiveness as an attacker. When a tilt in the defense presents itself, he no longer waits for the floor to re-balance; he exploits it and cashes in.
This is another reason why Towns, the passing hub, has worked so well. Since he’s bullying his way through tinier players, you have to guard him with a big man. Cross-matching assignments is no longer a choice; it’s a death sentence.
Part of the reason Towns is flourishing on offense is that the Knicks have allowed him to operate as the sole big man on the floor (only sharing 27 minutes with Mitchell Robinson this postseason, per PBP Stats). Only this time, it isn’t the detriment to their defense that it once was.
I want to say that Towns is defending is you know what, off. But since this is a family-friendly website, I’ll just say he’s defending his tail off.
A picture-perfect example of this came in Game 3 against the Cavaliers. Early on, Cleveland was doing a great job of punishing his soft hedge/at the level coverage by hitting the roll man and unlocking a 4-on-3 power player (first clip in montage below). The Knicks adjusted by having Towns switch to drop coverage (which he executed perfectly, second clip). But Towns also maintained the presence of mind to know when to switch to a hard hedge/trap when ballscreens were angled toward the sideline (like he did to force a jump ball on James Harden).
It isn’t a perfect measure, but one way to get a glimpse of Towns’ impact is through Basketball Reference’s Box Plus-Minus (BPM). Through two rounds, Towns was one of only four players to maintain a BPM over 14 while playing at least ten playoff games. Since then, that number has dipped a hair, but he is still at a level that few players in NBA postseason history have ever reached.
Now, is Towns actually in the same player classification as the names listed in that tweet? Absolutely not. But is Towns playing at a borderline All-NBA level right now? Probably.
And most importantly, the Knicks are the closest they have been to ending their championship drought that they have been in the last three decades, thanks in large part to Towns unlocking the best version of himself.
