We’re nearly one month into Karl-Anthony Towns’s first season with the New York Knicks, and so far the results are an extreme microcosm of his entire career. Towns has been unstoppable on offense and is getting exposed on defense, with tangible impact on both sides of the ball that illustrate just how contradictory his presence can be.
On the heels of their splashy summer, the Knicks are off to a 7-6 start. According to Cleaning the Glass, their offensive rating with Towns is 125.1 and they’re scoring 8.7 more points per 100 possessions when he plays—two marks that place him in the 94th and 87th percentile at his position, respectively. Meanwhile, the Knicks’ defensive rating is 119.1 and the team is 5.3 points per 100 possessions worse with Towns on the court, putting him in the 22nd and 24th percentile. In simpler terms: Towns ranks 15th in offensive estimated plus-minus and 270th in defensive estimated plus-minus.
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None of this is surprising. It’s who Towns is and what makes the four-time All-Star’s game so irresistible and repellant on a team that now must learn how to harness his offensive brilliance while mitigating the harm his limitations tend to cause. It’s deadeye 3-point shooting, dominance on the block, and a potentially unstoppable two-man partnership with Jalen Brunson vs. inadequate drop coverage, nonexistent rim protection, and a brand of frustrating fouls that have become somewhat of a calling card.
A duality this severe won’t last the entire season. Towns is drilling over 50 percent of his 3s above the break as the anchor of a starting five that can’t for the life of it get any stops (only two five-man units that have logged at least 50 minutes have a worse defense than New York’s top lineup, which is not normal for a Tom Thibodeau–coached team). Patience is fair for someone who’s not even 15 games into his tenure with a completely different organization. But a lot of what we’ve seen is real.
Towns is averaging 26.4 points and 12.4 rebounds per game. His true shooting percentage has never been higher, his turnover rate has never been this low (his vision out of the high post might be his most underrated strength), and only three players (Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Anthony Davis) have a higher PER. Towns is graceful with the ball in his hands. He glides past sluggish counterparts, a reminder of how lethal his skill set is when he’s functioning at the 5, surrounded by teammates who can space the floor instead of, primarily, be the critical figure who opens it up for everyone else. During New York’s comeback that ultimately fell short against the Bulls last week, Towns took the game over with Brunson on the bench, scoring 17 of his 46 points in the fourth quarter. Last season with Minnesota he scored at least 30 points in five games, a mark he’s already matched as a Knick.
“He’s been shooting very well,” said Nets head coach Jordi Fernández, who watched Towns notch a game-high 26 points on 10-of-16 shooting in a win over Brooklyn on Sunday. “And that’s what he does, right? He’s probably the best shooting center in the NBA.”
Few big men discombobulate opposing game plans like Towns. His gravity is unmatched. His shot-making is surreal and diversified. He’s one of the most efficient isolation players in the league right now. Sometimes those possessions are against smaller defenders, a willful submission by opponents that would rather live with that than the destruction Towns wreaks popping for open 3s. It’s a predicament the NBA has never been able to solve.
His mere presence behind the 3-point line is a fire drill. Watch how the Heat react when Brunson throws the ball back to Towns off a dribble handoff:
When it’s time to get stops, though, he plods on his heels with a bull’s-eye on his chest—a last line of protection who has never exhibited enough discipline or awareness to justify that much responsibility. To watch Towns defend is to be reminded, for better and worse, of the drastic concessions Minnesota made to accommodate their big man’s limitations. He is the rare star who gives his team hope while simultaneously holding them hostage.
The Rudy Gobert trade changed Towns’s position. It was humbling, a splash of cold water on a franchise player who had just watched his front office surrender most of its assets to mask his largest defect. Towns sacrificed and still made an All-Star team as Minnesota embraced a defense-first identity that worked. The Timberwolves reached the conference finals with three stars who coexisted in complementary ways. The decision to move on from Towns was less about any imperfections in his game and more to do with the financial ramifications his supermax contract would have on the team’s long-term ability to furnish a bona fide championship contender around Anthony Edwards, Gobert, and the increasingly pricey role players who made everything work last year.
The Knicks don’t have that kind of ecosystem. They can’t provide the Defensive Player of the Year as a safety blanket. According to Bball-Index, the percentage of time Towns spends guarding centers is up 32.81 percent from last season, the second-highest jump in the league. Mitchell Robinson’s injury history makes his eventual return less of a reliable solution than, at most, a temporary balm. Precious Achiuwa is also hurt but should help as either a solid backup or maybe someone who can add more size to the starting lineup, reducing the amount of pick-and-rolls Towns has to cover (with Josh Hart coming off the bench).
OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges are versatile defenders who can capably slide up or down a position without skipping a beat, but the challenge for each of them, already covering for Brunson’s own defensive warts, is massive. KAT’s teammates can provide only so much help by allowing an easier assignment or shrinking hard off their own man, as Anunoby does here:
In crunch time of that loss against the Pacers, Thibodeau took Towns off Myles Turner after Indy’s starting center hit about 37 straight pick-and-pop 3s. The decision diminished Turner’s threat, but had no tangible impact on the Pacers, who still had success setting ball screens with whoever Towns was guarding. There was even one play where Towns didn’t know who he was guarding, which resulted in an open corner 3 for Pascal Siakam. Mental mistakes can be fixed, and it’ll take some time for Towns to adjust to different teammates, distinct schemes, and a positional duty that, while perfect for his skill set on one end, may be incompatible with his individual deficiencies on the other.
“You know who he is based on what he’s done throughout his career and what he’s capable of doing,” Thibodeau said. “So then it’s, how do you adjust? How do you learn a new system and things like that.”
According to Sportradar, when defending a pick-and-roll as the screener’s man, Towns is typically in a deep drop quite a bit more than he was last year. Some of that should be chalked up to a positional shift and a changing role. He’s switching and showing less, with rebounding as the priority. But back in 2022, the last time Towns was a full-time center, the percentage of pick-and-rolls that were soft was all the way down at 48 percent, nearly 20 percentage points below where it currently is. Related: Minnesota had a competent defense with Towns on the court.
“We gotta create a pick-and-roll scheme that helps him out and protects him in the best possible way,” Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch told me three years ago. “And we gotta be able to protect the paint as a team, at the point of attack as a shell defense. And that’s going to help Karl out a lot.”
Right now, it’s a delicate dance until Robinson and Achiuwa return. Even then, there are issues that may just be endemic with Towns at the five—sometimes, in those aforementioned situations where Anunoby is guarding the center and KAT is hiding out on a lower-usage option, no rotation ever comes. Here he is 2.9-ing the paint as Alperen Sengun drives by Anunoby—who’s shading Houston’s center toward help that never comes from the baseline—for a layup:
And here, against the Bulls, Anunoby checks Nikola Vucevic so Towns can stick to Josh Giddey. Bridges could’ve done a better job staying attached at the point of attack, but again, no help comes:
Just how troubling has it been? Opponents are shooting 70.8 percent at the rim when KAT’s on the court and 54.2 percent when he’s off it. (The league average is currently 65.7 percent.) More directly, according to Bball-Index, opposing field goal percentages at the rim when Towns defends a shot are 13.1 percent higher than the shooter’s expected average. This number is so terrible for a big man that the second worst starting center in the category is Vucevic at … 4.8 percent. The bad news is that’s unspeakably terrible. The good news is it’s unspeakably terrible and an outlier for Towns, whose previous career worst in this category was -4.8 percent back in 2020.
It’s worth remembering how dependent and intertwined teammates are when trying to execute a defensive scheme. Not everything is Towns’s fault.
“I’ve been studying [defensive metrics] for a long time, and it’s hard because you’re doing things with five people. If someone gets scored upon, maybe someone’s not in the gap, maybe someone’s not reading the ball correctly,” Thibodeau said. “When you’re evaluating pick-and-roll defense, is the communication correct? Is the body position of the big correct? Is the shell correct? Are we closing the gap correctly? There’s a lot of things that go into it.”
In some cases, a breakdown occurs before the ball gets to the paint and Towns simply isn’t equipped to cover someone else’s error on the fly:
And sometimes he’s out of position, jumpy, and can’t help but overreact:
Depending on your perspective and how much room you believe Towns has to realize his own defensive improvement, the first few weeks of this season are either cause for optimism or existential dread.
In general, there’s no denying the fundamental elements that make it so fascinating. It’s a test of tolerance that deserves some patience, even when so much of what we’re seeing was predictable.
How Thibodeau adjusts throughout the season, be it his pick-and-roll defense, individual matchups, or rotation will be an ongoing evolution. Time will help. Chemistry will grow. But don’t overlook the fact that Minnesota’s front office literally just saw what a championship-level environment can look like with Towns heavily involved, then rejected the premise.
Now, with one of their most important and talented players doubling as such a pronounced, expensive, and established liability, the Knicks’ hunt for a livable equilibrium will not only define this season, but also dictate whether this entire era will go down as a massive success or gutting disappointment. With Towns, there’s rarely much in between.
