Karl-Anthony Towns did not arrive in New York needing to prove he could play, but the Knicks surely enhanced his game, and the partnership saw the Big Bodega reach a stage he could never quite grace during his time in Minneapolis.
If we’re talking legacies, Towns couldn’t have had a better start to building his. KAT was drafted with the No. 1 pick coming off one year of college ball at Kentucky. He went on to win the Rookie of the Year award. Would eventually partake in the All-Star game six times
while on his way to earning three All-NBA selections.
And career-wide, Towns never took the pedal off the metal, boasting averages nearing 23 points, 11 rebounds, and three assists per game while shooting above 50% from the floor and nearly 40% from three.
That is a real résumé, to say the least. Winning an NBA championship with the Knicks, however, would make it read differently and put KAT in a completely different stratosphere.
Ask Towns himself, who has always made the loudest shooting case among modern bigs and has not even been a tiny shy about proclaiming himself an all-time great the GOAT at it.
“Honestly man, I ain’t gotta play like nobody. I’m me. I’m the greatest big man shooter of all time. That’s a fact,” Towns said back in December 2021, while still a Timberwolves hooper. “You can see the stats. I ain’t got to play like no one else. Everyone trying to find themselves to be the second version of me when I’m the first version. I don’t got to be the second version of someone else. I’m already an original. I don’t have to be a duplicate of someone else.”
Like it or not, the numbers surely support the argument. Towns became the first center to win the NBA Three-Point Contest in 2022, has cleared 42% from deep two different seasons separated by seven years, has notched more than 40% of his threes in six of his 11 years in the Association, and he’s now giving the Knicks a kind of frontcourt spacing and playmaking ability that both 1) Knicks fans spent years looking for, 2) pretended they could live without and win in the current basketball economy, and 3) was simply unheard of in KAT Land.
His Minnesota years were never empty, even though the franchise’s struggles made them look meager, and started to build a wrong narrative about Towns’ true talent.
Towns spent nine seasons with the Timberwolves, became the first bona fide face of the franchise after Kevin Garnett’s prime, and helped them reach the playoffs in 2018, 2022, 2023 and 2024. The biggest breakthrough came in 2024, when Minnesota beat the defending champion Denver Nuggets in Game 7 and reached the Western Conference finals for the first time since Garnett’s 2004 Wolves did it.
Then came the homecoming.
Towns grew up in New Jersey, starred at St. Joseph High School and returned to the area with the Knicks via trade before the 2024-25 season. In New York, his numbers carried immediate weight: 24.4 points, 12.8 rebounds and 3.1 assists while shooting 52.6% from the field, 42.0% from three and 82.9% from the line.
Now he is in the 2026 NBA Finals as a central piece and 1B to Jalen Brunson’s 1A. KAT entered the series averaging 16.9 points, 10.6 rebounds and 5.9 assists in the playoffs while shooting 57.2% from the field and 48.9% from three, then opened his first-ever finals with 18 points, 12 rebounds and four assists in New York’s Game 1 win over the San Antonio Spurs. That’s all FanDuel needed to turn the Knicks into the new favorites to win the title, listing them at -134 odds.
Speaking of legendary big-man shooters, it’s fair to say that a ring might not place Towns in Dirk Nowitzki’s tier. Dirk still has an MVP award, a Finals MVP, 14 All-Star selections, 12 All-NBA selections, and also won a title in 2011, leading the underdog Mavs team against the mighty Heatless.
But a ring would make Towns a champion in New York, and bulk up an already-packed résumé and help him overtake a few big shooters out there. Outside of Dirk, it’s fair to say that KAT would have done more than enough to consider him a better big-boy shooter than walking-glass Joel Embiid, perhaps the second-best ever only behind Dirk (best shooting PF) and legitimately the No. 1 and undisputed top shooting center in history, breezing past Nikola Jokic.
On top of that, and with a title under his belt, Towns would no longer be just labeled an elite shooting big with a questionable playoff track record and just a few monster regular seasons. He would be the Knicks center who helped end a title drought dating back to 1973 alongside Jalen Brunson and the rest of the Manhattan Mob. He won’t be even remotely close to joining the absolute best centers to ever grace hardwood courts around the L—although he will have a solid case to crack the top-20 easily—but he will once and for all get his name legitimazed and shut all of his naysayers’ mouths in one fell swoop.
And for Towns, that’s all that’s missing.
