How far the Knicks go in 2026 will ultimately come down to Karl-Anthony Towns.
That statement may seem hyperbolic, and I get that. But Jalen Brunson, who has become one of the most sure things in the league, is already elite and relied on heavily. OG Anunoby is an amazing two-way player, but he probably isn’t going to get too much better. And the rest of the supporting cast of Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart, Mitchell Robinson, Deuce McBride, Jordan Clarkson, Guerschon Yabusele, and co. aren’t the kind of needle-mover Towns can be.
Towns, on the other hand, is a superstar talent whose defense has always left people wanting more, but he possesses the offensive ceiling to put any contender over the top. Now, that defense will likely not improve much, if at all. The potential addition of Robinson to the starting lineup should lessen his responsibility as the rim protector and the safety of the defense, but we can expect his individual defense to be about the same. But as far as the offense goes, Towns and, more importantly, incoming head coach Mike Brown, can do something special.
Pairing Brunson, an isolation scoring machine, who can go bucket for bucket with anyone in the league, with a stretch big like Towns should have yielded much better offensive results last year. But Tom Thibodeau, as he often has throughout his career, took too long to make adjustments. With Hart in the starting lineup, it greatly stunted Towns’ ability to stretch the defense with his shooting, which in turn also made things more difficult for Brunson, and to a lesser degree, Anunoby and Bridges. But it wasn’t just the starting lineup. As the season went on, the team reverted to playing more and more isolation basketball with less movement, less passing, and less spacing- all things that hindered the Knicks’ two best players.
With a much more offensive-minded coach in Brown, New York will inevitably look to play a brand of basketball centered around pushing the pace, moving the ball around more, and spacing the floor. If Brown can do that, then Towns’ defensive shortcomings should not matter as much. Sure, it’ll still be infuriating to watch. He’ll still leave shooters open, execute closeouts poorly, fail to hedge screens, be late on rotations, and he definitely will still commit head-scratching fouls that will have you questioning both what he is doing and why you continue to expect anything different.
But if the Knicks could manage to rank ninth in scoring with 115.8 PPG last season, despite spending much of the second half of the season handicapped with suboptimal lineups, then we should expect this team, which happened to add offensive firepower in the offseason, to be in the top three in scoring, and average closer to, or even more than, 120 PPG. And Towns will be just as integral to that as anybody else on the roster, including Brunson.
If you look back at Brown’s offensive schemes and sets in Sacramento, which ranked first in points per game and offensive rating in the 2022-23 season with a less talented roster than the Knicks currently have, a lot of it was predicated on utilizing Domantas Sabonis. In Towns, Brown does have a more talented big man, but it won’t be as easy as plug and play. While Towns is a better shooter and overall scorer than Sabonis, the latter does a few things better.
The obvious one is passing. Knicks fans saw last season that Towns has a knack for flair. On many nights, Towns fired no-look passes, behind-the-back passes, and even spinning passes. And they were all very entertaining to watch for one reason or another. But Sabonis is simply a better passer. Whatever passes Towns can make, Sabonis can make more consistently and more accurately. He can also make many passes that Towns can’t. And this isn’t even just about the physical act of passing. Sabonis possesses the ability to read the game at a much higher and quicker level than Towns can. The Kings’ big man clearly sees the game differently, and the only big man that is better than Sabonis at passing and reading the game happens to be Nikola Jokic, who remains the consensus best player in the world. Meanwhile, we routinely saw Towns struggle with late double teams, which often led to turnovers in the form of bad passes or offensive fouls.
Another thing Towns does worse than Sabonis is setting screens. Towns isn’t a bad screener by any means. But he isn’t the kind of screener that guys like Jokic, Sabonis, and former Knick, Isaiah Hartenstein are. Towns gets lazy with his screens at times and occasionally fails to set screens with the necessary angle or physicality.
The good news for Towns and the Knicks, though, is that they don’t need him to be Sabonis. And they don’t necessarily need Towns to reach Sabonis’ level on those things. Would it be nice if he did? Yes. But given Towns’ super shooting, incredible post, and mid-range game, he really just needs to make slight improvements and adjustments in those areas to turn what was a solid offense last year, into an elite one.
Towns being able to set better, and harder screens would allow for Brunson, Anunoby, Bridges, and Hart to create more space. And that, along with a slight improvement in reading defenses, and making quicker decisions, would also allow him to be a secondary, and at times, a primary offensive hub out of the elbow. Much like Brown did with Sabonis, the Knicks can run a lot more offenses through Towns, without delegating him to just a screen and pop or screen and roll option- something Thibodeau eventually relied on too much. Do that, and we could be in for a career-season for Towns- one in which he could even surpass his career-high of 26.5PPG, which he set in the 2019-2020 season.