Karl-Anthony Towns scored 28 points in a win over the Bulls Sunday night.
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CHICAGO — Trying to make sense of Karl-Anthony Towns’ season has at times felt like attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube while wearing drunk goggles in a dark room. There’s mystery. There’s confusion. There’s bad luck and good luck.
For months, the default answer is that the Knicks’ All-Star is simply struggling to find his old form in his new coach’s system. Because of his position on the court, Towns has more to digest than his smaller counterparts. Those excuses were acceptable a month or two into the season. A week past the All-Star break, though, Towns’ season is still a rollercoaster ride full of stomach-turning drops.
Here we are in late February, and Towns is in the midst of his best three-game stretch as a scorer since early December. He’s doing it in the same system that he said he’d struggled to grasp. He’s doing it from the same spots on the floor as before. He’s doing it with most of the same teammates.
The change?
Towns, who scored 28 points in a nail-biting 105-99 win Sunday night over the Bulls, is making shots. Simple. One of the game’s best outside shooters is putting the ball in the basket.
“When anyone sees the ball go through the hoop, it gives a level of confidence and makes you feel like you can do anything on the court,” said Jalen Brunson. “Then you shot-fake, they bite, and then you’re able to make plays for yourself or others.
“For (Towns), it’s a great sign. He’s sticking with it. That’s who he is.”
For months, Towns hasn’t been the player we’ve known him to be for the greater part of a decade. The shots he usually makes haven’t gone in at the same rate. Yet he’s found his stroke since the break, hitting nine of his last 16 3-point attempts. Coincidentally or not, his improved 3-point shooting has also brought about an uptick in finishing at the rim, another area where he was having a hard time in his 11th season.
It’s easy to blame Mike Brown for Towns’ erratic play. The Knicks’ first-year head coach is the only major change from last season, when Towns made Third Team All-NBA.
Yet, Brown isn’t the reason Towns was immersed in his worst 3-point shooting season since his rookie year before the weekend. He was at a meh 36.5 percent on wide-open 3s (two attempts per game) and an even-worse 34.8 percent on open 3s (2.2 attempts per game) before Saturday’s victory against Houston. Shooters of Towns’ ilk would salivate over four of those looks per game, but he just hasn’t converted enough of them.
Brown also can’t put the ball in the basket for Towns around the rim, where the veteran big man is shooting a career-worst 61 percent. Brown isn’t leading the NBA in offensive fouls committed. That’s on Towns.
As Brunson alluded, everyone feels better when shots go in. The rim gets bigger. The court feels wider. Better decisions are made with the ball. For the last three games, Towns has sensed and done all of those things. In turn, the offensive system feels like it’s working.
Brown isn’t free of blame for Towns’ head-scratching season, and neither are Towns’ teammates. Brown’s offense is known to rely more on read-and-react principles than traditional play calls. That method hasn’t always appeared to suit one of his most talented scorers. And Towns’ teammates do have to make sure to find him when he’s open.
Brown does have calls for Towns, who hasn’t always capitalized on those opportunities. Maybe calling Towns’ number more often could make it so he doesn’t feel as absent on multiple trips down the floor. Bending the team’s offense to get one of the Knicks’ stars more involved might not be a bad thing.
It’s a give-and-take situation.
“Whenever you’re making shots or getting plays called for you, you feel more involved, you feel more in the flow of the game,” Josh Hart said. “Sometimes, for a player, that’s all you really need to get back on track. He gave us a lot of energy today and yesterday by making shots, but also defensively he brought it yesterday.”
Towns is averaging a career low in shot attempts, and that might be where some of the fan frustration comes from. He can vanish. That’s not what anyone expected when the Knicks traded for him at the beginning of last season. Still, Towns has never played on a team with this much offensive talent. Just like he needs shots, so do Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Landry Shamet. And we all know Brunson is getting his.
In an offensive system that tries to avoid predictability and prioritizes paint touches and 3-point shooting, the ball will gravitate to different players on different nights. The Knicks hired Brown to make that happen, a sharp turn from last season’s approach.
“I’ve said this before, Jalen had four shots in the first half (the other night), and he’s our best player,” Brown said. “There have been other halves when he doesn’t have as many shots, but, at the end of the day, he’s getting the most field-goal attempts. (Towns) is our second-best player, and if you go look at the cumulative stats, he’s getting the second-most field-goal attempts. He’s the second-leading scorer. He’s an All-Star. He’s going to have halves like that and nights like that, but if it averages out to where he’s second in those categories and an All-Star … he’s having a pretty good year.
“He’s getting an opportunity. We don’t call a ton of plays. If you compare his numbers to last year, (Mitchell Robinson) didn’t play much during the regular season. (Towns) averaged 36, 37 minutes per game. Mitch is playing now. Landry didn’t (play much) last year. We’re trying to get him to 17 to 22, or 23 minutes per game. We have Jose (Alvarado) now. … When you do that, not only are guys’ minutes going to go down, so are their field-goal attempts and all of those other things that impact the game that you can see statistically.”
The version of Towns we’ve seen since the break is closer to the one we’re accustomed to. It’s the same system, the same coach and the same teammates. And his shots are falling. The solution can sometimes be that simple.
If this is a turning point for Towns, then the Knicks are in a good place. When his shots go in, life gets easier for a lot of people.
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James L. Edwards III is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the New York Knicks. Previously, he covered the Detroit Pistons at The Athletic for seven seasons and, before that, was a reporter for the Lansing State Journal, where he covered Michigan State and high school sports. Follow James L. on Twitter @JLEdwardsIII