Karl-Anthony Towns fought through a rough start and delivered 21 points and 17 rebounds in the Knicks’ Game 3 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on 7-for-12 shooting, but it was not enough to stop New York from falling again after taking Game 1. He also added four assists, two steals and two blocks, a line that showed impact on both ends even as the Knicks came away frustrated.
The performance arrived after a series in which Towns has already flashed two different versions of himself. In Game 1, he was quiet for three quarters before dominating the fourth. In Game 2, he produced early before fading late, the kind of finish that led head coach Mike Brown and others to say Towns had not been aggressive enough offensively when the game tightened.
That criticism lands in the middle of a larger season-long problem in New York: the Knicks have never quite settled on how to use him. They opened the season with Brown’s motion offense, then shifted to more freelance play in the middle of the year. As the playoffs approached, they ramped up organized offense again, and Towns has looked far more involved when the Knicks run set actions than when they are improvising. Brown has plenty of actions in his playbook that can create quality looks for Towns, but the team has not delivered them with enough consistency.
Towns has not exactly resisted the role change. He bought into contributing in ways that go beyond scoring, and he led the league in double-doubles and in games with 10 or more rebounds during the season. Even so, his touch in the offense has continued to come and go, and that has made each playoff game feel like a fresh test of whether the Knicks can make the league’s premier rebounder feel like a central piece instead of an afterthought.
The burden now shifts to the players around him, especially Jalen Brunson, to keep Towns involved before New York’s season slips further away. The numbers say he can produce when the offense feeds him; the last two games say the Knicks have not yet found a way to make that happen for long enough.
