Karl-Anthony Towns not worried his glaring Knicks issue
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Karl-Anthony Towns wasn’t buying into the premise of the question.

It was put to him, after Saturday’s Knicks practice, that some might argue he should be taking more shots given his status as a superstar.

“I’m about winning, so as long as we’re winning, it’s fine,” Towns said.

Implicit in the argument, of course, is that Towns getting more involved would help the Knicks win more games.

“All I know,” Towns said, “is as long as we win, we good.”

That may be the right attitude after Towns put up an underwhelming 10 points in a Game 6 win over the Pistons, but it’s little secret the Knicks will need more from him against the Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

It likely isn’t much of a coincidence that the best regular-season game Towns put up against the Celtics — a 34-point, 14-rebound double-double on April 8 — was the only one of the four matchups between New York and Boston this season that was close.

In the other three games, all blowouts, Towns wasn’t as much of a factor, with just 45 points combined.

Still, there was an awful lot of talk Saturday about how impactful Towns can be when his shot isn’t going.


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“When there’s a second or third defender coming in, I don’t want him to try to shoot over three people. I want him to make a pass,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said of Towns. “If he does that, he’s helping his team. That’s probably the biggest thing. I thought KAT played a terrific Game 6, if you look at the rebounding and the defensive plays he made at the end of that game. That was huge for us. Huge.”

Indeed, it’s true that Towns’ 15 rebounds in Game 6 led the Knicks and indeed, there are nights the Knicks can win without him as one of their leading scorers.

“We can’t let offense or shots falling dictate the way or how hard we play or the things we can control,” Jalen Brunson said. “So I feel like a lot of people on this team have that mindset and we’re going to have to, because the longer we go [in] playoffs, the more difficult games are gonna be, so we can’t just let little things like that have an effect on how we’re playing.”

Nevertheless, it’s hard to picture the Knicks pulling off what would be a monumental upset if Towns isn’t a factor in all parts of the game throughout the series — yes, including putting the ball in the basket.

Lagging behind scoring-wise against the Pistons — Towns averaged 19.7 points in the series compared to 24.4 during the regular season — is one thing.

Doing so against the Celtics would be another.

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