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Knicks coach Mike Brown called out Karl-Anthony Towns.
And Towns responded.
Pistons center Paul Reed, starting in place of the injured Jalen Duren, had 15 points and five rebounds at halftime of the Knicks’ 111-97 win over the Pistons on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. He was winning his matchup against Towns.
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Brown let Towns know at halftime.
“I just told him the truth,” Brown said. ” ‘KAT, the guy is killing us on the glass and when he gets a rebound, he’s putting it back. Or anything he gets in the paint, he’s putting it back. If he catches it on the perimeter, guard him.’ And he did those things. I gotta tip my hat off to KAT because I thought his shift in his mindset was really big for us in the second half.”
Towns finished with a game-high 27 points and 20 rebounds. He recorded 19 of those points and 11 of those rebounds in the second half. Reed, on the other hand, was a nonfactor in the second half. And he clearly grew frustrated, earning a flagrant-1 foul for elbowing Towns in the head while fighting for a rebound in the third quarter.
“I challenged KAT and KAT had a tremendous second half,” Brown said. “Twenty-seven and 20, he’s more than capable of doing that night in and night out.”
Karl-Anthony Towns, who had 27 points and 20 rebounds, goes up for a shot past John Collins (20) during the third quarter of the Knicks’ 111-97 win over the Pistons on Oct. 27, 2026 at Madison Square Garden. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post
Brown experimented across the first three games with having both Jalen Brunson and Towns on the bench at the same time.
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It delivered bad results, and Brown went away from that strategy on Tuesday.
“In Games 1 and 2, my big experimentation was playing KAT and Jalen in two stretches together,” Brown said. “And so the middle of [those games], I had both KAT and Jalen off the floor. We didn’t really do that last year. Watching it, I think we did it in the preseason some, but we didn’t play everybody all the time so it was a little harder, but watching it, I didn’t like it.”
Brown similarly experimented with having Josh Hart come off the bench to begin the season…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/karl-anthony-towns-responds-mike-065539896.html
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Publish date : 2026-10-28 06:55:00
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