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In Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight, Karl-Anthony Towns will anchor the center position for the New York Knicks against the San Antonio Spurs. It’s been a long and bumpy road for the former number one overall pick, but Towns has finally reached the summit of the NBA Playoffs.
KAT is playing the best basketball of his career. In these playoffs, he is averaging 16.9 points per game on incredible 57/49/89 shooting splits while putting up 10.6 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 1.4 blocks, and 1.2 steals per game as the Knicks have won 11 straight games en route to their first Finals appearance since 1999.
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It wasn’t that long ago, though, that many would have thought all of that would be impossible for Towns, a fact Minnesota Timberwolves fans know all too well. In his first eight NBA seasons, Towns and the Wolves made the playoffs just three times as KAT drew criticism after each series.
In his first two playoff games in 2018, Towns scored a total of just 13 points as James Harden, Chris Paul, and the Houston Rockets took a 2-0 series lead. In the series-defining Game 3 of the 2022 series against the Memphis Grizzlies, Towns took just four shots as Memphis came back from 20 points down (nearly twice) to take control of the series.
Towns played better in the 2023 loss to the eventual champion Denver Nuggets, but ultimately, the Wolves were 0-3 in the playoff series with huge questions looming about Towns’s ability to be an effective player in the Playoffs.
All of that changed for KAT in the 2024 Playoffs.
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During the 2023-24 regular season, the Wolves won 56 games, earned the three-seed after sitting on top of the Western Conference for much of the season, and, despite being underdogs, swept Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, and the Phoenix Suns for the franchise’s first playoff series win in 20 years.
Towns guarded Durant the entire series and held his own against a matchup that, on the surface, seemed primed to play KAT off the court. In the series-ending Game 4, KAT put up 28 points on 11-17 shooting from the field and 4-6 from beyond the arc.
It was the first data point that proved a team…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/welcome-nba-finals-karl-anthony-130000467.html
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Publish date : 2026-06-03 13:00:00
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