Karl-Anthony Towns went with a bold choice of words to describe his late-game inactivity on Monday night, and New York Knicks fans should be irate.
Following the club's 107-106 loss to the Hawks in Game 2, when asked by reporters about his lack of productivity down the stretch (attempted two total shots in the final period), the big man simply said: "The opportunity just didn't come around to shoot it."
This is no mere role player making these remarks. This is a perennial All-Star and objectively one of the best offensive centers the game has ever seen, who, here in 2025-26, is pulling in the ninth-highest salary in the association at $53.14 million.
Someone of this ilk should not simply wait around for their chance to make an impact on their team when in crunch time -- they must go out and create opportunities for themselves.
Sadly, this has been an issue all year long for Towns.
His 25-point performance on 75.0 percent shooting from the floor in Saturday's opening-night win suggested that these particular struggles may have been left behind in the regular season. However, his latest disappearing act with the game on the line, accompanied by his post-Game 2 remarks, arguably makes Towns look worse than ever.
Jalen Brunson vows to get Knicks teammates more involved on offense
If Town won't demand the ball himself, then perhaps Jalen Brunson will optionally just force-feed him the rock moving forward.
After their upset loss out at Madison Square Garden, The Captain himself made a vow to reporters that he'll figure out a way to get his teammates, namely Towns, more involved in the offense down the stretch of games, saying it's "on me to make sure I set the table."
Though best known for his scoring abilities, late in the regular season, Brunson found himself leaning into more of a quarterback-on-the-court type of role for this Knicks team, averaging 8.8 dimes a night over his final 19 games of action.
On top of this, both he and Towns established an incredibly dominant one-two offensive punch off of screens when running the floor together.
Needless to say, Brunson is more than capable of being a frequent and efficient distributor for New York, and, if Towns isn't going to call for the ball, it seems Jalen will need to take it upon himself and get his All-Star counterpart involved on a more consistent basis.
Based on his comments, fans should count on this being the case as soon as Game 3.
Add us as a preferred source on Google