{"id":615508,"date":"2026-02-21T09:37:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T09:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/615508\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T09:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T09:37:18","slug":"the-problems-behind-karl-anthony-towns-puzzling-knicks-season-arent-going-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/615508\/","title":{"rendered":"The problems behind Karl-Anthony Towns\u2019 puzzling Knicks season aren\u2019t going away"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Detroit<\/p>\n

Javonte Green knocks the ball away from Karl-Anthony Towns during the Knicks’ Feb. 20 loss to the Pistons.<\/p>\n

Karl-Anthony Towns\u2019 involvement in the Knicks offense has been one of the biggest storylines all year and likely will continue to be the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a microscope to see that he is less comfortable in coach Mike Brown\u2019s system compared to last year under Tom Thibodeau.<\/p>\n

Way too many times, Towns goes long stretches on the floor and hardly is noticeable offensively.<\/p>\n

During the Knicks\u2019 blowout loss to the Pistons on Thursday night<\/a> at Madison Square Garden, Towns scored just two points on three shots in 15 minutes during the first half.<\/p>\n

Particularly puzzling was that the Pistons were playing without their top two centers in Jalen Duren and Isaiah Stewart, both serving suspensions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If anything, it was a game Towns should have been featured in the offensive game plan and aggressive from the outset.<\/p>\n

\"Karl-Anthony<\/p>\n

Karl-Anthony Towns looks to move the ball during the Knicks\u2019 loss to the Pistons on Feb. 20. Robert Sabo for the NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cOur offense is our offense,\u201d Towns said. \u201cIt\u2019s been that way all year. So we have our system, and we\u2019re gonna \u2014 regardless of who\u2019s in the game or not in the game \u2014 we run the system that we have implemented for our team to the best of our abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, all of a sudden, Towns came out of halftime noticeably hunting for his shot and forcing the issue.<\/p>\n

He took five shots and five free throws and scored 12 points in the third quarter.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way it\u2019s largely been for Towns this year \u2014 nothing has been natural or in the flow of the offense.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s usually been troublingly uninvolved or overly aggressive, with very little in between.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re continuing to try to do different things to help free him up,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe\u2019ll continue to search to try to do different things to free him up throughout the rest of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Javonte<\/p>\n

Javonte Green knocks the ball away from Karl-Anthony Towns during the Knicks\u2019 Feb. 20 loss to the Pistons. Robert Sabo for the NY Post<\/p>\n

Towns\u2019 production and efficiency are down this year.<\/p>\n

His marks of 19.8 points per game and 34.9 percent shooting from 3-point range would represent the lowest since his rookie season, and his 46.7 percent shooting from the field would be the worst of his career.<\/p>\n

He is taking just 14 shots per game, which also would be in line for the fewest of his 11-year career.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t going away.<\/p>\n

If anything, as the postseason gets closer and closer, finding a solution is growing more urgent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Javonte Green knocks the ball away from Karl-Anthony Towns during the Knicks’ Feb. 20 loss to the Pistons.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[7,1016,912,13154,563,304,6,1136,191,3810,3806,760,1015],"class_list":["post-615508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-knicks","tag-basketball","tag-isaiah-stewart","tag-jalen-duren","tag-javonte-green","tag-karl-anthony-towns","tag-knicks","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkknicks","tag-the-knicks","tag-the-pistons"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116107953033271889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}