Mike Brown’s new-look Knicks offense looks good when his team sticks to the script — save for one glaring area the team needs to shore if it intends to get back on track to competing for a championship.
Karl-Anthony Towns has been woefully underutilized through the opening third of Brown’s first season at Madison Square Garden.
Brown’s system prioritizes pace, space and ball movement, but the rock doesn’t quite find the team’s second-best player at a rate worthy of one of the league’s most talented scoring big men.
And that’s a problem, because the defense hasn’t been up to par, and if the Knicks are going to win gunfights, they’d better tune-up their heavy weaponry.
Towns is just that: a five-time NBA All-Star and three-time Third Team All-NBA member who helped the Minnesota Timberwolves reach the Western Conference Finals. Yet at times, he’s become an afterthought in a Knicks offense that’s become unrecognizable since the NBA Cup Final victory.
Towns, for example, took just two shots through the opening two periods and finished 6-of-16 from the field in the Knicks’ loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Saturday. He took 10 shots (and shot 50% from the field) in New York’s Dec. 31 loss to the San Antonio Spurs and just nine shots in the victory over the New Orleans Pelicans on Dec. 29.
“I got more shots,” Towns said when asked what changed for him in the second half on Saturday. “So just trying to make shots.”
Towns didn’t expand on what sparked his second-half run.
“I’ll watch the tape. I know in the third, I got more aggressive on the offensive end and made the most of those opportunities,” he said. “I just shot more shots. That’s the only way you can make more points.”
The Knicks acquired Towns in a blockbuster deal that sent Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and a first-round pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves for the star big man to play a focal role in the offense. Yet Towns’ scoring has regressed: Since last season, he’s gone from 24.4 points per game to 22 flat, 52.6% shooting from the field to 47.3% (a career-worst) and 42% from three-point range to 35.4% (second-worst).
Towns is averaging under 15 field goal attempts per game for the first time since 2023 and just the second time since 2018. He is taking two fewer shots per game than he did last season under former head coach Tom Thibodeau and owns a 1.6-second average time of ball possession through the Knicks’ last five games.
Towns needs to help himself by making open shots. One of NBA history’s most prolific three-point shooting centers is shooting just 33.3% on wide-open threes, defined as shots with a defender six or more feet away, and shot 0-of-5 from downtown against the Sixers on Saturday.
There appears to be an upswing: After a miserable start, Towns broke out for 44% three-point shooting in the month of December.
The Knicks are also inching closer to Josh Hart’s return from a severe ankle sprain sustained on Christmas Day against the Cavaliers. Hart has assisted on 27 of Towns’ 219 made field goals this season.
