{"id":713492,"date":"2026-04-18T22:03:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T22:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/713492\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T22:03:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T22:03:28","slug":"hawks-coach-quin-snyder-admits-to-knicks-karl-anthony-towns-mismatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/713492\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks coach Quin Snyder admits to Knicks Karl-Anthony Towns mismatch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atlanta Hawks head coach Quin Snyder admitted the Karl-Anthony Towns matchup in his team\u2019s first-round Eastern Conference playoff series against the Knicks will be difficult for his undermanned team to handle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a challenge for us right now,\u201d said Snyder, whose Hawks lost backup center Jock Landale to an ankle injury for two weeks. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of pick your poison, you know? How do you handle him on the post with a mismatch? Do you just guard him? How do you handle pick and roll? How do you handle him and Brunson on pick a roll? I think for us to be prepared for all those situations, you can adjust every time down the court. Obviously, we will be doing that. That\u2019s no secret. That\u2019s what, you know, great offensive players demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Towns has averaged 28.1 points, 13.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists on 50% shooting from both the field and 3-point range in the seven times he\u2019s played the Hawks since the 2024 trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves. This season, he had 36 points and 15 rebounds in a Dec. 27 victory, then another 21 points, 12 rebounds and six assists on 9-of-12 shooting from the field in the Knicks\u2019 98-95 victory on April 6.<\/p>\n

The Hawks<\/a> start Onyeka Okongwu at the five, but behind him, Atlanta is thin, with Tony Bradley and Mohamed Gueye as reserve bigs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe picked up Tony Bradley [who was on] our G-league team last year. Mo Gueye has been playing the five, which hasn\u2019t been his primary position this year and then obviously spent time guarding [KAT],\u201d Snyder said. \u201cSo hopefully we can do a better job guarding him than we have.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s times where it\u2019s good defense, better offense. One of the biggest things is we\u2019ve got to keep him off the foul line. There\u2019s some ways that he scored against us I think are real. Trying to focus on that and make him do something different. I say that he can do a lot of things that are different, so we\u2019ll just lock in, try to make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snyder knows Towns well. During his near decade-long stint at Utah Jazz head coach, he coached against Towns in 24 games, though the two never met in a playoff series. Towns averaged 22.6 points and 11.1 rebounds on 53% shooting from the field as a Timberwolf.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s always just been a gifted scorer. I think the thing that maybe gets overlooked a little bit at times is his rebounding. That\u2019s another layer to it, because even when you feel like you\u2019ve impacted him and he doesn\u2019t score, he\u2019s on the glass,\u201d he said. \u201cThe situations that he\u2019s in [in New York] are a little different, especially the pick and roll with Brunson. That\u2019s a layer that it\u2019s hard to deal with when you have two players that are that gifted individually and then, when they\u2019re connected as well, it presents more problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snyder said Towns\u2019 elite 3-point shooting is the most difficult part of his game to guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike any player in the league, they get better as they\u2019re in the league, but I think having him in trail as much as he is and the range that he has, those closeout situations \u2014 if they\u2019re long, you think you\u2019re on them and them [you realize they\u2019re] seven feet tall, you\u2019re not [on them],\u201d the Hawks\u2019 coach said. \u201cThen you think you\u2019ve done a good job at that, and he makes a quick read and jabs, shot fakes and goes around you.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo do your best. But I think he\u2019s gotten better.\u201d<\/p>\n

HAWKS DIDN\u2019T PICK KNICKS<\/p>\n

Snyder said the Hawks did not rest their stars in the season finale to intentionally land the Knicks in the first round<\/a> of the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was completely [bogus] \u2014 our focus was totally on us coming into [the season finale],\u201d he said ahead of tipoff of Game 1 on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Had the Hawks beaten the Miami Heat in their final game of the season, they would have earned the East\u2019s No. 5 seed and a Round 1 matchup with the No. 4 Cleveland Cavaliers. Instead, the Hawks rested all of their main players as the Toronto Raptors defeated the Brooklyn Nets on the last day of the regular season. The scheduled loss for the Hawks penned-in a New York-Atlanta playoff series.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were fortunate enough to be playing in the playoffs, I think that was the goal for us, and then to be healthy,\u201d Snyder said. \u201cWe had lost Jock a short time prior to that, too. The focus for us was on our health. There was no easy matchup, and we weren\u2019t concerned about that as much as we were ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Atlanta Hawks head coach Quin Snyder admitted the Karl-Anthony Towns matchup in his team\u2019s first-round Eastern Conference playoff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[7,677,563,304,6,1136,191,3810,3806,2986],"class_list":{"0":"post-713492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-knicks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-hawks","10":"tag-karl-anthony-towns","11":"tag-knicks","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-knicks","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkknicks","17":"tag-quin-snyder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116427974458368456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713492","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=713492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}