Throughout his career, New York Knicks big man Karl-Anthony Towns has built up a reputation of being a sub-par defensive contributor.
During his first season in the Big Apple, former coach Tom Thibodeau received a stark reminder of this truth, as his top-10-ranked defensive unit from the year before dropped to a middling 13 overall, while Towns, personally, registered the fourth-worst defensive rating on the team (minimum 50 games played).
Now, in 2025-26, new headman Mike Brown finds himself coming to this same realization about the veteran's lackluster production on the less glamorous side of the ball, and, though we may only be six games into the campaign, it seems more likely than not that this is a trend that's bound to linger throughout the entirety of the season.
Knicks defense has been absolutely horrendous with Karl-Anthony Towns
During these early stages of the year, the Knicks find themselves taking yet another step back on the defensive front. As things currently stand, they place 16 in defensive rating (115.3), 24 in blocks per game (3.8), and 25 in opponent field goal percentage (48.5).
Now, while it's hard to place the blame for this backslide entirely on Towns' shoulders, from both the eye test and advanced metrics, it's somewhat easy to cast a substantial amount of it in his direction.
Look no further than New York's recent two-game series against the Chicago Bulls, for example, where the All-Star was targeted profusely while manning the middle, leading to an average of 54.0 points being scored in the paint while primary assignment Nikola Vucevic scored 26 and 17 points, respectively, on roughly 60.0 percent shooting from the floor.
With lineups where Towns has been stationed at the pivot, the Knicks have proven to be absolutely abysmal on the defensive side of the ball this season, as they rank in the 55 percentile in opponent points per 100 possessions (114.5) and an even worse 12 percentile in opponent effective field goal percentage (58.6 percent).
Sadly, it's not as if the offense has been able to make up for these egregious ranks, as this exact rotational setup has New York dropping just 120.1 points per 100 possessions with an effective field goal percentage of only 53.7, placing in the 79 and 41 percentiles, respectively.
While some may look to the recent return of the double-big lineup consisting of Towns and Mitchell Robinson as a reason to be optimistic, it's already understood that coach Brown feels obligated to manage the latter's workload. Sadly, considering his extensive injury history, this is a necessary approach moving forward.
Because of this, unless some sort of in-season move is made to bolster their talent level at the five, the expectation should be that KAT will remain the primary center for the Knicks moving forward.
Hopefully, their offense will finally start to click and make up for the clear defensive lapses of this lineup configuration, because, if it doesn't, things could quickly start to look a whole lot worse than a mere .500 record.