Tis the season, as we all know, to be talking about Juan Soto, today and every day until we get the word, probably next week, about where he is going to play baseball next season and for all the seasons to follow. He may end up in New York, or somewhere else. Right now, all we know for sure is that when he did show up in the big city he was everything he was advertised to be before he got here, and every single thing for which the Yankees could have hoped. From Opening Day on and all the way through Game 5 of the World Series, he was so clearly made for the circumstances of the occasion.
So, too, at least so far, is Karl-Anthony Towns.
Towns is trying to be the same kind of difference-maker and game-changer for the Knicks that Soto became for the Yankees, where he was as much an MVP for them as was Aaron Judge, the guy who hit 58 home runs hitting behind him. Was Judge the guy who did win the MVP? He sure was. And Jalen Brunson is still the Knicks’ MVP, all day and all night. It doesn’t change the fact that life has gotten a lot easier for him, and the Knicks have started to look a lot better than they were at the end of last season, because Brunson now has someone like Towns in the same batting order with him.
Put me down as someone who wasn’t sure about this trade when Leon Rose made it. I liked the team Rose already had. And will always wonder, along with Knick fans, how last season might have played out if everybody had been healthy against the Pacers; and what it would have looked like in the Eastern Conference Finals if a healthy Knicks team had taken the shot against the Celtics we were so sure they were going to take, in a series for which Basketball New York had waited a very long time.
So Rose took his shot and made this trade for Towns, ex-Kentucky and ex-Timberwolves, someone who even at the age of 29 feels as if he has been around the league longer than he has. His Timberwolves made it past the second round last spring, something the Knicks still haven’t done since 2000, before getting rolled by the Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals. At which point the Timberwolves decided they might be better off without him.
We will see about that, and so will they. What we know right now, with a Knicks team that is starting to look very much ascendant, is that the Knicks are looking a lot better with him than they were without him, now that they are playing the most entertaining offense they have played since the glory days of Clyde and Capt. Willis, Earl the Pearl and Dave DeBusschere and Bradley. Do they play the kind of defense the old Knicks did, or Pat Riley’s Knicks did? They don’t. But there are still 60 regular-season games for Tom Thibodeau, who knows a fair amount about how the game is supposed to be played at the other end of the court, to figure it out and have his players figure it out.
But for now, the problem is for the other team to figure out how to stop them, and that means stopping Towns along with stopping Jalen Brunson, the leader of the band. It means trying to stop a big man playing like a real big man and putting Patrick Ewing numbers into the books: Twenty-five points a game coming into the weekend, and 13 rebounds, and three assists. Carmelo Anthony, in his time at the Garden, could hang scoring numbers on you and rebounding numbers, too. He never played like a big. Karl-Anthony Towns plays like the biggest big they’ve had since No. 33. And that is saying plenty.
And he has done exactly what Soto did for the Yankees, if obviously in a much smaller sample so far. He has shown up amidst expectations as high as the skyline and not only delivered, night after night and game after game, he has balled for the Knicks as if he had spent his entire NBA career at the Garden instead of in Minneapolis. He has played as if he belongs. He has played as if made to play with Brunson, and Josh Hart, the glue guy, and Mikal Bridges, another new guy, and OG Anunoby, who lately has turned into a lit fuse.
“Listen,” Towns’ college coach, John Calipari, told me Friday. “He was hurt at first by the trade. So was Julius [Randle, another Kentucky player for Cal]. But check it out, the trade has worked out for both of them. And now Karl-Anthony is the one in New York, which he’s merely perfect for. He’s authentic, he’s chatty, and he’s competitive. New York all the way. Not just competitive, but with a burning desire to win. And understand this: He’ll sacrifice when he has to, but take over a game when he has to do that.”
Cal paused and said, “The real deal.”
The big Kat just keeps showing up, filling up the stat sheet the way he has, not just opening up the Knicks offense for himself, but for everybody else. Of course none of this happens the way it is happening without Brunson, the best Knicks point guard since Clyde. Nothing that happened with the Yankees this season could have happened if Aaron Judge didn’t chase 60 home runs again, and once again become the home run king of baseball even with Shohei Ohtani chasing him from the other side of the country, and all the way to the World Series.
But the Knicks don’t look the way they have looked lately if Towns isn’t playing like a dream wing man for Brunson. We can only wonder how everything could have worked out differently for Patrick Ewing if he ever had a point guard like Brunson. At least Towns won’t have to wonder about that for a long time.
Mitchell Robinson gave the Knicks an inside presence, for sure he did, last season, at least when he was healthy. So did Isaiah Hartenstein. But again: The Knicks haven’t had a big man like No. 32 since No. 33.
There is so much season to be played. But then that is the fun of this right now, imagining the possibilities. The Celtics are still the Celtics and the Cavaliers have risen up the way they have, and the Bucks are slowly, and surely, starting to figure things out in Milwaukee. But it is never too soon for Knicks fans, who already have made it clear they like this team even better than the last one, to have big ideas about how all this comes out in the end. The man in the middle is such a big part of it. They’ve waited since Patrick for a big like this.
Dodgers’ Soto stance, Mark Buehrle’s Hall of Fame candidacy & the unsung NFL team nobody wants to face
Juan Soto is who the Yankees and Mets want.
And the Red Sox.
And the Dodgers.
But it is the Dodgers who the Yankees and Mets want to be.
You hear that the Dodgers don’t need Soto, and that enough is enough, something you used to hear about the Yankees.
In what world does that make sense?
The Dodgers are on the top of the world now.
But after three games of their series against the Padres, they were one loss away from going home, and not making it to the World Series again.
They were that close to falling short, and way short of the Series, again.
And then they threw two shutouts at the Padres, one of them in a bullpen game when it was the first match point against them.
You never have enough.
Mark Buehrle might not ever make the Hall of Fame, but he had a better career than you think.
The great Catfish Hunter had a lifetime record of 224-166, earned run average of 3.21, eight All-Star appearances, a Cy Young, all those World Series.
Buehrle had a lifetime record of 214-160, an ERA of 3.81, had a no-hitter and a perfect game and had 14 straight seasons of pitching 200 or more innings and came within two innings, in his last season, of making it 15 seasons of 200-plus in a row.
He was a five-time All-Star and a four-time Gold Glove winner and won a World Series with the White Sox in 2005.
At the very least, he should get enough votes this time to stay on the ballot.
The Packers aren’t going to win their division, and might not even get to second place.
But guess what?
Nobody is going to want to play them in January.
Here are their four losses this season:
Twice to the 11-1 Lions.
Once to the 9-2 Vikings.
Once to the 9-2 Eagles.
Alabama, even with three losses, belongs in the college football playoffs.
The Tide beat Georgia and blew out LSU on the road and beat South Carolina.
Did they play like tomato cans against Oklahoma?
Yup.
Do I want to see them play Notre Dame in the first round, if it works out that way?
Very much so.
And so should you.
Somehow it was just 15 months ago that Aaron Rodgers ran out onto the field at MetLife Stadium carrying the flag before that Monday Night Football game against the Bills.
Fifteen months.
It feels like that happened 15 years ago.
In the old days, before committees and postseason tournaments, the heated — and overheated — debate in college football was about who was No. 1.
Now all the shouting is about who’s No. 12.
I know we all share Woody Johnson’s disappointment in not getting his old job back as Ambassador to the Court of St. James.
But Jets fans are still hopeful that he’s got a shot at being named Donald Trump’s Ambassador to the Moon.
