Knicks All-Star point guard Jalen Brunson shouldered some of the blame for Karl-Anthony Towns fouling out while attempting to set a screen for him in overtime of the Knicks’ 137-134 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday.
“I just feel like we both went a little early. I gotta be better waiting for him to come set it,” Brunson said after the loss. “Just be patient. That’s all it is. Unfortunately, it was his sixth.”
With 2:14 left in overtime, Brunson attempted to use the screen as Towns began to set it on Pacers defender Aaron Nesmith. Nesmith crumbled to the ground after the contact, a nearby official blew the whistle, and Towns waved the call off as he walked to the bench disqualified due to foul trouble for the second time in three games.
Mike Brown said his coach’s challenge expert, assistant coach Jordan Brink, told him not to challenge the play in overtime.
“It looked like he might have had his foot out and the guy just tripped over his foot. That’s a hard one to challenge because it was inadvertent,” Brown said. “His foot looked like it was outside of his shoulder when he tried to stop. The guy just got his feet tangled up. It wasn’t anything we were going to fight.”
The sixth foul was an unfortunate, but far-too-familiar ending for Towns, who didn’t get to reap the benefits of his own late-game heroics on Tuesday. Brunson missed three consecutive go-ahead shots late in regulation, and Landry Shamet missed a game-winning attempt at a three before Towns was fouled on a put-back attempt and made two free throws with 0.2 seconds left on the clock.
He finished with 22 points on 8-of-17 shooting from the field to go with 14 rebounds and three assists against the Pacers on Tuesday but logged just 32 minutes compared to 40 or more for Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges.
“Throughout the course of the game, we hope that you don’t pick up any cheap ones,” said Brown. “So if there is a game that goes into overtime or anything like that, we can afford to stay on the floor.”
Towns ranks first in the NBA in offensive fouls (48) with 14 separating him from the second-place Jaren Jackson Jr. He is in a four-way tie with Jackson Jr., Jaden McDaniels and Wendell Carter Jr. for most total personal fouls on the year (177).
Asked if he believes he’s getting an unfair whistle, Towns feigned frugal.
“That’s a [league] fine question,” he said. “I ain’t answering that. I’ll let y’all make y’all own interpretations.”
Towns said he can adjust his game to further avoid offensive fouls in the future.
“There’s things you can do, and sometimes you just have to take parts of your game and put ‘em on a shelf for a day and utilize other parts,” he said. “That’s why I work hard on every aspect of my game. So if things aren’t going right in that aspect, I can go to another bag of tricks that I’ve got.”
Towns also admitted he and Brunson need to be in better alignment with their pick-and-roll game to avoid offensive foul calls on screens moving forward.
“You understand how [the officials] are calling it, and you’ve gotta change with the game,” he said. “And I understood that the closer the screen gets, the more [the defender is] gonna fall, and it’s gonna go into the area to be a judgment call.
“I just told [Jalen] in the game, ‘I’ve gotta get a step ‘cause they’re gonna attempt to fall and try to get a foul.’ It’ll be harder for them to garner an offensive foul when you have a step. You’ve gotta obviously adjust to how the game’s gonna be called out there, and the signs were early telling us what we had to do to be successful.”
