{"id":869788,"date":"2026-10-28T07:36:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T07:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/869788\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T07:36:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T07:36:21","slug":"karl-anthony-towns-responds-to-mike-browns-knicks-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/869788\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl-Anthony Towns responds to Mike Brown’s Knicks challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knicks coach Mike Brown called out Karl-Anthony Towns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And Towns responded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pistons center Paul Reed, starting in place of the injured Jalen Duren, had 15 points and five rebounds at halftime of the Knicks\u2019 111-97 win over the Pistons<\/a> on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. He was winning his matchup against Towns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brown let Towns know at halftime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI just told him the truth,\u201d Brown said. \u201c \u2018KAT, the guy is killing us on the glass and when he gets a rebound, he\u2019s putting it back. Or anything he gets in the paint, he\u2019s putting it back. If he catches it on the perimeter, guard him.\u2019 And he did those things. I gotta tip my hat off to KAT because I thought his shift in his mindset was really big for us in the second half.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Towns finished with a game-high 27 points and 20 rebounds<\/a>. He recorded 19 of those points and 11 of those rebounds in the second half. Reed, on the other hand, was a nonfactor in the second half. And he clearly grew frustrated, earning a flagrant-1 foul for elbowing Towns in the head while fighting for a rebound in the third quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI challenged KAT and KAT had a tremendous second half,\u201d Brown said. \u201cTwenty-seven and 20, he\u2019s more than capable of doing that night in and night out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NewKarl-Anthony Towns, who had 27 points and 20 rebounds, goes up for a shot past John Collins (20) during the third quarter of the Knicks\u2019 111-97 win over the Pistons on Oct. 27, 2026 at Madison Square Garden. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n

Brown experimented across the first three games with having both Jalen Brunson and Towns on the bench at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It delivered bad results, and Brown went away from that strategy on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Games 1 and 2, my big experimentation was playing KAT and Jalen in two stretches together,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnd so the middle of [those games], I had both KAT and Jalen off the floor. We didn\u2019t really do that last year. Watching it, I think we did it in the preseason some, but we didn\u2019t play everybody all the time so it was a little harder, but watching it, I didn\u2019t like it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brown similarly experimented with having Josh Hart come off the bench to begin the season last year, alongside Mitchell Robinson. It wasn\u2019t long until he reversed course, however.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some things that I\u2019m looking at or messing with that may or may not stay the same,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThat\u2019s part of what you\u2019re trying to do to figure out what\u2019s best for your team long term. In the short term, it might not turn out good, like it didn\u2019t turn out good not starting Josh, we took our lumps. But it was good to go through it last year. So, it\u2019s something we\u2019ll continue to try to figure out early on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knicks coach Mike Brown called out Karl-Anthony Towns.\u00a0 And Towns responded.\u00a0 Pistons center Paul Reed, starting in place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[7,296,188,3860,563,3357,6,191,297,66],"class_list":["post-869788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-pistons","tag-basketball","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-detroitpistons","tag-karl-anthony-towns","tag-mike-brown","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-pistons","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117517391463748814","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869788","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=869788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}