What Karl-Anthony Towns needs to do to succeed with the New York Knicks

What does success look like for Karl-Anthony Towns, the newest New York Knicks big man?

After the chaos of Friday night’s trade news died down a bit, that became the big topic at hand. New York started talking itself into the trade because there are plenty of positives to go along with it, as this franchise tries to become a contender. And the Knicks have been very aggressive over the last year-plus in putting this team into an Eastern Conference echelon it hasn’t reached since Y2K was a threat. This is a team with actual and realistic thoughts of contending, and Towns is the latest (and maybe final?) piece to help the Knicks figure it out. He’s the second option behind Jalen Brunson, and he fills a need the Knicks simply don’t have a reliable answer to at the moment — big man.

The interesting thing about the Towns experience with the Knicks is, I’m not sure numbers even really matter when it comes to how success will be measured with him. That’s kind of wild for a guy who has averaged 22.9 points, 10.8 rebounds, 3.2 assists, and 1.3 blocks with a career 62.3 percent true shooting percentage. He’s the only player in NBA history with averages of at least 22 points, 10 rebounds, three assists, a block, and 62 percent true shooting. He’s a truly unique big man, but he doesn’t garner the respect that most good bigs have attached to them. Towns has been an internet punching bag for a good chunk of his career, with people questioning his mentality, focus and commitment to doing what a leader should do. And the Wolves’ lack of success has helped saddle those arguments against Towns with plenty of support to disprove his place in the NBA.

The Jimmy Butler fiasco hurt Towns’ reputation even more, and he’s been fighting an uphill battle against accusations of being soft or not physical enough or not committed to doing the right things. While some people will focus on numbers for Towns because that’s the easy, lazy way to discuss things, I believe Towns’ success with the Knicks is going to boil down to five different elements. What are those elements, you ask? I’m so happy you posed the question. Here they are!

It always starts with defense

I briefly wrote about this when grading the trade Friday night, but the defensive portion of Towns’ role is far more important than what he does on offense. We know he can score. We know he can shoot. We know he’s a great offensive weapon. But the Knicks need him to be a good defender. He doesn’t have to look like Bam Adebayo or Victor Wembanyama, but Towns has to become solid and consistent as the main big man. Unfortunately, that’s a pretty big task for KAT. While he has improved as a defender, there are a couple of concerns with him being your main big on the floor.

Years and years ago, Kenny Smith said something during an “Inside the NBA” breakdown of JR Smith as a young player on the Denver Nuggets that has stuck with me. They were talking about the young guard’s incredible talent and athleticism, which was always readily apparent. But “The Jet” (a.k.a. the other Smith in this anecdote) said JR was always playing for the highlight, rather than looking to make whatever the best play was at the time. I think about that a lot when I think of Towns as a defender. We’ve seen Towns play good defense for extended stretches. Every season before Rudy Gobert got to Minnesota, there would be one random month in which Towns really locked in on that end of the floor. You never knew which month it would be, but it was always so tantalizing. If Towns could be close to that level of defender consistently while also being the offensive force he is, then he’d be a top-10 player in the league, easily.

Here’s the problem. So many times, it looks like Towns is going for the highlight on defense. You mostly see this when he tries to block a shot he has no chance of really getting. He’ll make a late decision or just get too overeager in the moment. This completely compromises the team defense. In those moments, Towns staying solid and not exiting his area in the paint while still being a roadblock to the rim would cause the defender to attempt a tough floater or pull-up. And Towns’ team would have the rebounding in place to end the possession on a missed shot. Instead, Towns flies toward the scorer and leaves the offensive boards wide open. Towns might even force a miss, but now there is no backline help to secure the rebound. That’s him playing to the highlight block rather than staying solid.

Defensive decision-making can be an issue for Karl-Anthony Towns, shown here against Luka Doncic in the playoffs. (Brad Rempel / Imagn Images)

There are other issues, of course. He moves his feet OK on the perimeter but not great. He’s not always great at staying out of dumb foul scenarios when he’s getting physically pushed around. Despite his size, Towns can still get bullied by big men. And he has plenty of lapses in help or in pick-and-roll defending, especially if it involves a pick-and-pop threat. Tom Thibodeau needs Towns to 1) buy into the system and 2) be solid in the system. Thibodeau doesn’t necessarily require his bigs to be Draymond Green or Adebayo in how much they do. But they have to be able to ice a pick-and-roll, compete on the perimeter to get away from dribble penetration, recover to the middle without compromising the defense on a string, and be in the right help situations. And even though we hear Thibs bellowing instructions from the sideline, KAT needs to be the communicator for everything the defense needs to do.

He’ll have plenty of help defensively in Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, and OG Anunoby. Maybe those guys can buy him time to keep in the right frame of mind and not venture outside of what the situation should dictate. But this version of KAT is way more important than a 30-point threat who can drop five 3-pointers on you. He’s capable of doing all of this, but it requires tremendous focus and commitment.

Don’t hold the ball on offense

Towns gets criticized for his offensive decisions quite a bit. Want another stat of just how rare his offense is? Only two other players (Steph Curry and Zion Williamson) have averaged at least 22 points for their career while posting a 62 percent or better true shooting. Lower that true shooting to 60 percent for the career, and Towns is still just one of nine players (Curry, Zion, Joel Embiid, Charles Barkley, Adrian Dantley, Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Giannis Antetokounmpo) to match it while averaging at least 22 points for their career. So, why pick apart his offensive game? Because there are three issues he still has despite entering his 10th NBA season. First and foremost, Towns can hold the ball way too long.

Roughly 96 percent of Towns’ shot attempts happen within six seconds of touching the ball. That’s going to be the case for a lot of non-lead guards. When Towns gets a shot off within two seconds, his effective field-goal percentage is an absurd 61.6 percent. A lot of that is going to be just firing right away with his historic shooting touch or catching passes in the paint to go right up with it at the rim. The quicker his decisions are with the ball (whether it’s made by him or the playmaker setting him up), the more effective he is. When he’s in the range of two-to-six seconds getting a shot off on a touch, his eFG falls to 53.2 percent. Still good, but not nearly elite enough.

The second issue with Towns on offense is when he holds the ball longer, his chance of committing a bad turnover increases. Towns is a good passer and he’s a great scorer, but his turnover rate (13.8 percent since the 2018-19 season) is simply too high. Some of these come from the third issue he deals with on offense: offensive fouls. He led the NBA in offensive fouls last season with 52. Roughly 30 percent of his turnovers are from offensive fouls. Two years ago, he played in just 29 games but had 28 offensive fouls. He led the league in offensive fouls three seasons ago with 68. He’s near the top of the league every year, and they’re all just mistakes he shouldn’t be committing at this point. Quicker decisions on offense will eliminate a lot of this.

Own the boards

We talked about it a little bit with Towns going for blocks he can’t get instead of keeping solid positioning to help end possessions on the boards. The Knicks were 14th in the NBA in defensive rebounding percentage. Without Mitchell Robinson (for now) and Isaiah Hartenstein (in OKC), the Knicks need Towns to own the boards, especially on defense. Hart is an elite rebounder. Anunoby and Bridges are solid rebounders, but Towns has to clean everything up. Let’s look at the Wolves pre-Gobert to see how much Towns can be expected to clean the glass.

In the four seasons before acquiring Gobert, the Wolves finished 27th, 24th, 18th, and 27th in defensive rebounding rate, respectively. That is … not ideal. During that four-season stretch, Towns averaged 11.0 rebounds per game (8.1 on defense). That’s pretty good. In those four seasons, Towns also was well above 40 percent in grabbing contested rebounds. To put that in perspective, Robinson was in the 49-63 percent range during those four seasons. Robinson was 61.6 percent on contested rebounding opportunities. The recently traded Julius Randle hasn’t been over 30 percent in his previous four seasons, so Towns does step in as a much better rebounder than Randle. We just have to see if he and Hart can hold the fort down on the boards until Robinson is healthy again.

Take a lot more 3-pointers

This part will be very different for the Knicks, as this team finally gets to play with an elite shooting big man in tow. The Knicks were 11th in 3-point volume and 14th in accuracy last season. That’s with 5.3 attempts from Randle, whose 31.1 percent from beyond the arc is basically a wasted shot. The bizarre thing about his attempts is Towns attempted the exact same volume of 3-pointers. He put up 5.3 attempts per game, roughly 34.4 percent of his attempts coming from 3-point range. Randle’s attempts accounted for roughly 29 percent of his shot attempts. The difference? Towns shot 41.6 percent from downtown. Considering he’s at 39.8 percent for his career on almost 2,500 attempts, it’s safe to say Towns’ success was not a fluke.

There is no reasonable world in which Towns and Randle should attempt the same number of 3-pointers per game. If anything, I’d like to see Towns approach 10 attempts from 3-point range each game. The most Towns has attempted in a season is 7.9 per game when he knocked down 41.2 percent of them in the 2019-20 season. That was the year after Thibodeau was fired from coaching the Wolves. Under Thibodeau, Towns attempted just 3.6 per game. Times have changed both for Towns and for Thibodeau’s approach to basketball. And the personnel of the Knicks actually opens up a great opportunity for Towns to attempt a lot more. He needs to do so. Despite his shooting prowess, he tends to pump fake far too often on that set shot that is so pure. He doesn’t need to. The Knicks should be encouraging him to let it fly. If he attempts even eight per game and hits at his career mark, he’ll hit roughly 260 in a season. Only Donte DiVincenzo (283 last season) has beaten that for a Knicks player.

Don’t try to be the guy he thinks the media wants him to be

Last but not least, Towns has to be careful with how he approaches the New York spotlight and the fervent coverage this team receives. A lot of scrutiny hits Towns on the internet, and I’m not sure how much he consumes. But everything from his toughness to his choice of vocal tone gets hammered consistently and constantly when he’s playing. While I expect Knicks fans to embrace Towns immediately (we’ve already seen a lot of it over the weekend), things can turn pretty quickly. Towns is an emotional and sometimes sensitive person. I don’t think that’s necessarily a negative thing, by the way. As long as you can manage that stuff in the nerve-racking scenarios, then it doesn’t matter. If Towns starts losing his composure, then we start heading down a tougher path for him.

Towns tends to offer up a stellar soundbite as often as he can. When he was a young player, everybody seemed to be in love with the maturity of this budding star. He knows what sounds good, and he’s happy to say it. The problem is when his actions don’t match his vocal leadership in front of a camera, then it starts to lose a lot of credibility. You can mostly get away with that in a market like Minneapolis for a fan base that historically doesn’t expect much from a franchise that historically doesn’t offer much. But that doesn’t fly in New York. While I believe it’s best for business in the NYC market if the Knicks are good and thriving, you can’t deny there is an entire economy around hammering that kind of stuff.

We know Towns is fine being the second guy on the team. He showed that maturity in Minnesota as Anthony Edwards was ascending. He’ll have the same situation in New York with Brunson. But he needs to stay out of his own way when it comes to what he offers up the New York media and what he eventually delivers on or doesn’t deliver on. It will be as smooth or bumpy a ride as he creates for himself.

The Knicks have acquired a fascinating star player with the capability to help push this franchise over the top. But there are real roadblocks in the East and there are real roadblocks within KAT’s game. It’s up to him on how successful this venture will be.

(Top photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)