Even a Knicks fan would concede that Karl-Anthony Towns has his demons. They all stem from the whistle. During the regular season, the Knicks center was among league's most foul-prone players, racking up 3.4 per game. He led the league outright with 65 total offensive fouls. I don't think this is all his fault. Officials seem to assume the worst intentions on his part, and overlook when he himself gets clobbered on defense. I don't think I've ever seen a superstar given less leeway by the refs. But yes—it is also sort of his fault, too. Sometimes his limbs appear to flop around autonomously, as though animated by the decentralized nervous system of an octopus, and in the course of that flopping they strike an opposing player in an illegal way. If you choose to blame "Karl-Anthony Towns" for what his left forearm did of its own volition, fine, we Knicks fans simply have to accept the rules of engagement. But that's what made his performance in the Knicks' Game 1 win over the Spurs all the more remarkable. Towns and his appendages resisted their worst tendencies, and he outplayed the league's ascendant big man with a performance that cannot fully be captured by his 18 points, 12 rebounds, and four assists.
Victor Wembanyama is a matchup that demands discipline. Partially because there is simply so much surface area on Wembanyama's arms for a defender to potentially foul, making this the test of a lifetime for Towns. But more to the point: It is difficult to be disciplined when the offensive player upends any expectation of what a man that size can do. Wemby hasn't yet honed all his tricks to perfection, but he already has a disturbing menu of options to select from. Bite on a pump fake and he can fluidly step through into a layup from midrange jumper range, or get up into the defender's body to draw a foul, or attempt some freak shit like throwing the ball off the backboard for a dunk.
Towns doesn't always fare well under such uncertainty. He can lose focus and reach in, or lurch for an ill-advised steal, instead of trusting in his size and positioning. Yet for huge stretches of Game 1, he refused to make his usual blunders. Even if Wemby might someday obsolete every other big in the league, at time of writing he is just 22 years old and Towns is stronger than him in ways that matter in isolation defense. When Towns slid his feet and kept his hands up, he proved difficult to dislodge, drive by, or shoot over. As it turns out, those same nimble feet that make him such an effective slasher can also be put to use on the other end of the floor. These flashes reminded me of KAT's successful stints defending Nikola Jokic and Kevin Durant in postseasons past, and, going back an entire decade, the pre-draft scouting reports that hailed his post defense and rim protection. A player's role can shift over years in the league—especially when they round out into a historically great shooter, as Towns has—but the underlying traits might lie dormant, waiting for the right situation to light up again.
Many observers thought the Knicks would put their big, strong, disciplined OG Anunoby on Wemby to start the series. We might still see it in the games to come. But if the Knicks can instead survive Towns as the Wemby assignment, and let Anunoby lurk on a non-shooter and disrupt the paint, they're better off. The Spurs surely won't isolate Wemby on Towns as much as they did in Game 1, and will instead attempt to run the Knicks' seven-footer through more screens. But it's on the Spurs to prove that these actions can generate good offense while perturbed by some of the most active help defenders in the league. As for the other side of the floor, the benefits of having a center with enough shooting gravity to drag Wemby out of the paint are obvious. If there's anything I've wanted to see from Towns in his Knicks tenure, it's chucking a dozen threes a game, and if there was ever a series to do it, this is the one.
I'm giving in to my fandom, but it was moving to see Towns outclass Wemby, and to do it in a way that specifically challenges his biggest shortcomings. It was also moving to hear him, right after the game, describe the source of his composure: "I don't know what it was, but I just felt a calm and a peace that had to be coming from the woman above," he said, referring to his mother, who died in 2020 after complications from COVID.
"All day it was a weird feeling. It felt like I was a kid getting ready to go play my Saturday AAU games, Sunday AAU games. In a way I felt like I was seeing her in the stands. It was fun. It was really fun. It was comforting."
