Steve Popper: Knicks' Karl-Anthony Towns has nothing to prove, except that he's worth a contract extension
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns reacts against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first half of an NBA basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Before the first preseason game of the year, Karl-Anthony Towns posed a rhetorical question as he discussed his contract talks, asking reporters if he they thought he had anything to prove. And despite six All-Star selections, three All-NBA honors, as odd as it might sound, Towns is playing for a contract.
The contract extension didn’t come before the season and the Knicks shut down talks for now, so it would be understandable if he played that way — trying to up his scoring back to the high levels he’s hit at times. But through the first 10 games of the season, he has shot as few field goal attempts as he has in his career and instead willingly done the dirty work.
That brought him into Wednesday’s meeting with the Cleveland Cavaliers at Madison Square Garden seeking to etch his name in the Knicks history books not with a 50-point scoring night, but his 11th straight double-double — which would tie him with Willis Reed for the longest streak of consecutive double-doubles to start the season. He got the place in the record books with 21 points, 11 rebounds and even added eight assists, but what he and the Knicks did not get was a win.
Towns dismissed the records, even if he grew up a Knicks fan and knows just how cherished it is to find his name next to a number Reed set in 1970, like Towns defending an NBA championship, and focused on the four-game winning streak the Knicks brought into the Garden instead. But trailing much of the night, falling behind by as many as 12, the Knicks comeback fell short as the Cavs escaped with a 115-107 win.
"Shout out to Willis Reed,” Towns said. “I didn't know that. I just know that this team right now is on a good winning streak. We're playing good basketball and that's the most important thing and that's all the fans really want to hear about."
Actually, what the fans might like to hear is that Towns has signed a contract extension, although it apparently won’t come for a while if it comes at all. So he moves along, including a game like Wednesday when the team’s medical staff alerted Knicks coach Mike Brown that Towns might be unavailable with left calf soreness. But by the time the team took the floor in the afternoon for walk-through preparing for the Cavs, Towns was in the starting lineup again.
Towns connected on 7 of 11 shots from the field and 5 of 5 from the line. Brunson led the Knicks with 27 points on 12-for-23 shooting. But the rest of the Knicks starters struggled. OG Anunoby went 3-for-9, Josh Hart 3-for-8 and Mikal Bridges just 1-for-3 in 17 minutes. The Knicks also struggled to contain James Harden, who has been slumping for much of the season so far, but had a throwback 32-point performance.
While Towns is one of the most skilled shooting centers in NBA history, what has been most noticeable in the early start to the season is that he’s spearheaded an effort that had the Knicks entering play Wednesday as the top rebounding team in the NBA. Towns was No. 1 In the league in individual rebounding at 13.8 per game, 11th in offensive rebounding at 3.3 per game — no small feat for a player who is most well-suited to roaming the perimeter where he fires up three-point field goals at nearly a 40% rate.
The most unlikely part of the rebounding is that the Knicks lost Mitchell Robinson, arguably the best offensive rebounder in the game, to free agency and have been even better with Towns and Robinson’s replacement, Andre Drummond, leading the team.
"I just want to impact winning,” Towns said. “Like I said before, when you have a great offensive rebounder opening like Mitchell Robinson, you have to pick up the slack. Of course, we have one of the best rebound rebounders of this generation, Andre Drummond here, but I want to do my part. One of the ways I can impact winning and help our team tremendously on a nightly basis is making sure they don't give them second-chance points and also we get second chance points.”
The all-around play has been the constant this season. On nights like Tuesday he struggled with his shooting, finishing 5-for-14 overall and 2-for-9 beyond the arc, but still managed to pile up 21 points and 16 rebounds. Maybe the double-doubles shouldn’t be so surprising since when the Knicks turned around their postseason fortunes last season Towns twice recorded triple-doubles as he added double-digit assists to the accomplishments.
“Yeah, take a step back, I guess,” he joked. “But we work, we’re working, it’s early in the season.”
What he hasn’t done this season is put up one of the usual scoring outbursts — the kind you often see from a player seeking to create a market for a new contract. His season-high entering Wednesday’s game was 29 last week in Cleveland after scoring at least 40 points in a game in each of the last three seasons, including a career-best 62 three seasons ago in his final year in Minnesota.
Last week, he was asked if the contract uncertainty was a motivation for what he is doing on the court and he laughed at the notion.
“Being a No. 1 pick, winning a Final, getting your title and having to go out there and try to figure out how to do it again is the motivation,” Towns said. “That's enough motivation for me.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
