We have come to the portion of the NBA season when the better teams in the league have separated themselves and begin casting their gazes on the playoffs, which are just a short sprint away but still a long slog before finishing up. In the meantime comes the daily shuffle of playoff seeding, and the angst that can come with it. The New York Knicks find themselves neck-deep in that situation.
The Knicks have not been playing bad basketball, but they followed up their eight-game winning streak in late January and early February with a mediocre 4-3 stretch, which included two humbling losses against the East’s top-seeded Pistons. And then came Tuesday night’s disaster against the Cavaliers in which New York was pretty well KO’d from start to finish, shooting just 40.7% from the field and 27.0% from the 3-point line.
The Knicks appeared disjointed, which happens to teams at varying times throughout the year. But when it happens as the stretch run is just getting underway, the results are magnified.
Karl-Anthony Towns Got Only 5 Shots vs. Cavaliers
And worse for the Knicks was one simple number from the stat sheet: 5. That was the number of shots attempted by star big man Karl-Anthony Towns, the highest paid player on the team by far at $53 million this season. On a night when the Knicks had so much trouble generating offense, it was hard to fathom how Towns could get just five shots.
(He made all five, for what it’s worth, and finished with 14 points.)
Former NBA Coach of the Year Sam Mitchell, who coached Towns in his first NBA seasons with Minnesota, does not see this as much of a KAT problem as a coach Mike Brown problem.
Mitchell now is an analyst on Sirius XM NBA radio and called out Brown clearly on Wednesday, saying the coach is not doing his job by trying to force Towns to adjust his game to the system, rather than massaging the system to fit Towns.
Said Mitchell: “My job as the coach is to situate you and highlight your strengths and weaknesses and hide up your weaknesses, until your weaknesses become a strength. That’s my job as coach. So, when I coached, if a guy couldn’t do something, my job was to help him. Not expose him. Not just say, ‘Well, he can’t do it.’
“No. My job is to game plan to help him not be embarrassed and be exposed. That’s what the coach’s job is.”
GettyFormer head coach Sam Mitchell
Knicks Getting Career Lows From Karl-Anthony Towns
Towns’ struggles to mesh with coach Brown and what Brown wants him to do in the Knicks’ new offense has been the story that won’t die for this team, and it continues to crop up every time New York suffers a rough loss like they did against the Cavaliers.
Towns is down to a career-low 47.7% shooting, and averaging 20.0 points, fewest of his career since his rookie season. He has taken his lumps for his struggles this year. But maybe Brown deserves more blame than he is getting.
Knicks ‘Trying to Figure it Out’
Towns, for his part, has been reluctant to point too fiercely at the coach. After the Cavaliers game, he fell back on the notion that this is still a team that is developing.
“We just gotta be the best version of ourselves come playoff time,” Towns said. “Right now, we’re all trying to figure it out. Still figuring out the system, we’re trying to figure out all the new things we’re doing, the nuances that go with it, the changes we’re trying to make. It’s still a work in progress.
“I know being in New York, everybody wants that finished product right now. You want instant gratification, but we’re still trying to figure out a lot.
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