Between his struggles on the court and getting called out off it, Karl-Anthony Towns isn’t having a great season. At this rate, in fact, this could end up being the worst year of his career. Something is clearly off, particularly when it comes to the dynamic between him and Mike Brown. And apparently, the New York Knicks should have expected this, even braced for it, because Towns has been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for a while.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Knicks Film School podcast with Jonathan Macri, Stefan Bondy of the New York Post revealed that KAT has not-so-subtly hinted at missing Tom Thibodeau.
“And I will say that the other day, I wrote a story about how Mike Brown has been allowing players to bring their families along more on road trips,” Bondy says, at around the 18:35 mark. “They went to Abud Dhabi. They went to Vegas…They were in San Antonio for New Year’s. So anyway, so I went to KAT with this story, and he was like, ‘Yeah, I just want to let you know that Thibs did the same thing.’”
This is pretty innocuous upon first consideration. But there’s more.
“And more so than any other player, I’ve heard KAT defending and talking positively about Thibs, even when Thibs isn’t even brought up.”
Mike Brown and Karl-Anthony Towns clearly need to work on their relationship
There are admittedly inferences being made here. At the same time, it doesn’t take a world-class code-cracker to read between these lines.
Towns has repeatedly emphasized how much he’s needed to adjust and sacrifice in Brown’s offensive system. That is hardly notable when you’re just starting out under a new coach. It is eyebrow-raising, at minimum, when he’s reiterating it basically halfway into the season.
Things have taken a turn for the awkward, if potentially detrimental, more recently. Brown elected to close New York’s win against the Portland Trail Blazers with a combination of Mitchell Robinson and then no center at all over Towns. A few days later, in the beatdown suffered at the hands of the Sacramento Kings, KAT’s effort level drew the ire of fans. Brown proceeded to call him out for it.
Then, on the heels of the Knicks’ loss to the Golden State Warriors, Brown chalked up Draymond Green’s mini in-game dust-up with Towns to the former’s intensity level—and then singled out his own player’s fifth foul as a more damaging turning point.
These are not interactions or developments of a relationship on sturdy footing. And the Knicks cannot afford to let it go unaddressed.
The Knicks need to figure this out ASAP
To be sure, neither Bondy nor anyone else has implied that Towns is a locker-room malcontent. It would be unfair to apportion all of the blame for these tenuous circumstances exclusively to him as well.
This is a failure of organizational proportions. It might go away over time, once the Knicks start winning more games, and once Towns starts making more of the shots he’s hard-wired to make.
Still, time can only do so much when it doesn’t include action. This is not to say that Towns should be put on the trade block, or that Brown is on the hot seat. But the Knicks aren’t going anywhere special until their should-be second star starts playing like one.
And before he can do that, he and Brown need to get on the same page. Because right now, they’re clearly reading from separate books.