The Athletic has live coverage of Knicks vs. Spurs in Game 2 of the 2026 NBA Finals.
SAN ANTONIO — The New York Knicks couldn’t score, and their center, a man best known for putting the ball in the basket, did not mind.
Mired in a muddy, one-point game to begin the NBA Finals, Karl-Anthony Towns, towel draped over his neck, leaned into his team’s huddle during a timeout. He had a message, one that went against the reputation that had followed him over his first decade as a pro.
“Until the offense catches up, we gotta keep playing defense this way,” Towns told his teammates.
He did not stutter. Knicks coach Mike Brown stood to his left, head tilted and watching. Brown is notorious for letting others lead huddles during stoppages. Associate head coach Chris Jent draws up plays. Assistant Brendan O’Connor talks defense.
This time, Brown delegated the moment to a scorer who once declared himself the best-shooting big man ever. Most Knicks not named Towns were struggling to find the net. And yet, Towns spoke about the other end of the court.
“We’re at 34 percent (from the field). Whatever,” Towns, mic’d up for the ABC broadcast, said to his teammates during Game 1 of the NBA Finals. “We gotta keep playing defense this way. This will win us the game. Our offense will always catch up. It did in Game 1 in Cleveland (when the Knicks came back from a 22-point, fourth-quarter deficit).”
He reassured his guys.
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
Towns was correct. New York scrambled back from down 14 points to win 105-95. It now leads the finals, 1-0.
The Knicks, including Towns, continued playing defense in the way he described. The wings — Josh Hart, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges — stretched across the perimeter. Hart knocked away passes and dribbles. Any time the San Antonio Spurs’ 7-foot-4 tower, Victor Wembanyama, set a screen and rolled to the hoop, someone would hit him. It could have been Anunoby or Hart. Often, it was Jalen Brunson, a point guard who stands nearly a foot and two inches shorter than the Spurs’ center, though the height difference did not matter. Brunson continued to hit Wembanyama.
“We have each other’s back,” Brunson said.
San Antonio could not unfurl its offense. And Towns, a perennial 20-and-10 machine more known for counting stats than intangibles, led the way.
He guarded Wembanyama more than anyone else. When the Spurs manned Towns with smaller players, he bullied them on the glass. On the other side, he pulled the league’s scariest defender away from the hoop, where he scares off drivers — that is, all drivers other than Towns. With Wembanyama defending him, Towns bombarded the paint instead of removing himself from the offense.
For anyone who has watched the six-time All-Star of late, this should come as no surprise. This is not the same Towns who vacillated between dominant and absent in the early parts of this season, not the one whose repeated comments about feeling “uncomfortable” in Brown’s new offense became a recurring theme back in autumn, not the one who could drift away when he faced an unusual matchup.
The Towns who kept the Knicks within shouting distance for the first three quarters of Game 1 — when Brunson could not buy a shot, when Anunoby had yet to get hot, as Towns so clairvoyantly predicted the team would in that huddle — is the most composed version of the big man to exist. Two months into a playoff run that now places the Knicks just three wins away from their first championship in 53 years, Towns would have a case as the MVP of the playoffs, if there were such an award.
That story continued into the biggest series of his career.
“He was amazing,” Brown said. “The double-double was huge. He came up with some timely buckets for us. He’s a problem.”
Towns’ playoff effectiveness comes not in the raw numbers but in his adaptability. He went for 18 points, 12 rebounds and four assists in Game 1, a mundane stat line by his standards. He’s averaged 17.0 points (less than usual), 10.7 boards and 5.7 assists in the playoffs on shooting efficiency that should not be possible against the world’s best competition: Fifty-six percent from the field and 47 percent from deep.
His approach, however, has been far from regular.
In the first round of the playoffs, after the Knicks fell behind 2-1 to the Atlanta Hawks, Brown revamped the offense to revolve around Towns. The Hawks did not have a defender who could make Towns’ life difficult individually, so New York parked him in the post, fed him the ball and encouraged him to spearhead the attack. Scoring exploded. It has not stopped.
The Knicks have won 12 games in a row, 11 of them by double-digits, since that adjustment. And Towns has shifted his style along the way.
He threw kerosene on the Philadelphia 76ers’ combustion in the second round. By the Eastern Conference finals, facing a Cleveland Cavaliers defense loaded with long, defensive-minded big men, the Knicks tweaked how they used him. Towns adapted immediately, flowing into a heavier pick-and-roll strategy with Brunson. He continued to wreck on the glass.
He has played the best defense of his life in the process, executing the back ends of coverages. He has swatted shots. The former version of Towns, even from just a few months ago, would drive to the hoop, fall on layups and be slow to get back on defense. Now, he’s keeping his footing and bolting back the other way.
Brown called Towns’ Game 1 performance “one of his best” defensive transition games all season.
The effort came with Towns in a constant rumble to the paint, which began only a few minutes into the game.
Early in the first quarter, Wembanyama pressed up against Towns, who stood five feet behind the 3-point arc at the top of the key. Brunson arrived to set a screen on Towns’ right side, but Towns took off in the opposite direction. The deke surprised Wembanyama, and Towns glided to the hoop for a layup.
Not even a minute later, Hart rushed up the court — a major point of emphasis for the Knicks, who yearn to get into their sets before Wembanyama can block out their go-to spots. Towns trailed behind Hart, who fired the big man a pass. Towns pump-faked, then drove left on Wembanyama again, sliding past greatest shot blocker on the planet for another finger roll.
When the Spurs put smaller guys on Towns, he pushed his way to the hoop. When Wembanyama returned, he did not stop. One time, Wembanyama slapped away what would have been a ferocious dunk. It did not deter Towns.
“You don’t know what is going to unfold but I just wanted to be aggressive, especially early in the game,” Towns said. “Game 1 in the NBA Finals, and trying to bring that energy for our team.”
That energy puts the Spurs in a difficult position, forced to either place Wembanyama on the ball more than they want or use a smaller guy to defend the Knicks’ 7-footer. It places the Knicks up in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1994. And, on the biggest stage of his life, it puts Towns on even higher ground, producing his best ball when the Knicks are most in need of greatness.
