Karl-Anthony Towns has enjoyed a hell of a season, making an All-NBA roster for the third time in his career and leading his team to a conference finals berth for the second consecutive season. It is, by almost every measure, a successful campaign. Not many players can make the same claims as Towns.
Except the New York Knicks big man is now one loss from getting gentlemanly swept in a conference finals for the second straight season, and his role in his team’s shortcomings in the Eastern Conference finals has come under a microscope, as it did last year for the Minnesota Timberwolves in the West.
Towns is a unique player. A rare combination of size, strength and skill, he is one of the greatest shooting big men in NBA history. (He will tell you he is the greatest.) He can put the ball on the floor, score from the post and pass. He is everything you could want offensively from a modern-day, floor-spacing center.
He also cannot defend. He might be out of position. He might lack the quickness to get into position. And he will definitely foul. A lot. All three of those things make him a liability in pick-and-roll defense. And he provides little opposition around the basket. Opponents are making two-thirds of their attempts at the rim (regular season and playoffs) when Towns is the closest defender, per the NBA’s tracking data.
It is why his teams own a negative net rating when he has been at center on his last two playoff runs:
It is why the Timberwolves traded a handful of first-round draft picks in 2022 for the right to pair Rudy Gobert’s rim protection with Towns. It is one of the reasons why Minnesota abandoned that double-big experiment after two seasons, even after the Wolves reached last year’s Western Conference finals.
And it is the reason why the New York Knicks scrapped their starting lineup, replacing Josh Hart with Mitchell Robinson, in a desperation move to try to save an Eastern Conference finals they now trail, 3-1.
Teams are bending over backwards not to play Towns at center in big spots, only they have to, since he unlocks their most productive small-ball lineups, and teams rely on those to carry them home in crunch time, when offensive execution is at a premium. Except his defense grants the opponent an advantage.
It is a real conundrum, one the Timberwolves and Knicks have ridden to the conference finals, and one that might have set both of those teams’ ceiling below the NBA Finals. Which raises a curious question: Can a team win the championship with Towns as a centerpiece? (And this marks the first of a four-year, $220.4 million contract extension for Towns, who is scheduled to earn $61 million in the 2027-28 season.)
The Timberwolves reached last season’s conference finals with Towns at Gobert’s side in a monstrous frontcourt, and they were defeated, 4-1, when neither of their bigs could stop then-Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Dončić from getting whatever he wanted. So they ditched Towns for Julius Randle in what was mainly a cost-cutting decision, and they returned to the Western Conference finals, where they lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder, 4-1, similarly failing to stop their superstar, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Based strictly on the results these past two years, neither Towns nor Randle were the answer to who could complement Anthony Edwards on a title team, at least not at this early stage of his career. They won two series when they needed four. The Wolves are still searching for answers, as are the Knicks.
Which brings us back to the trade, as so often has happened this season. It was successful for both teams until it has not been for either at the highest level. The teams swapped high-class issues. Randle is his own. He can be wildly inconsistent, especially in the playoffs, vacillating between too engaged and not engaged enough, rarely dialed into the All-NBA sweet spot in between. Except in the first two rounds of this postseason, when he was great in wins over the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors.
Randle averaged a 24-6-6 through two rounds this season, far better than he ever was in the playoffs for the Knicks, only for him to turn back into a pumpkin in the conference finals, where he averaged a 17-6-3. In the end, the Timberwolves were more successful against the Thunder when Randle was on the bench.
For all of the Knicks’ success, and for all of Towns’ success, they are being outscored by 1.5 points per 100 possessions when he has been on the court in the playoffs. It is another reminder of what we have come to learn: In either conference, a team can vie for the NBA Finals with Towns as one of its highest-paid players, but his limitations limit its ability to excel on both ends — the stuff necessary to win the title.
That raises another fascinating series of questions: Would Randle have performed at this level for these Knicks? Could they have reached these heights without Towns? Only the basketball gods could know, and they have been more interested in settling a score between the Thunder and the Indiana Pacers. Nobody wants to see the NBA’s bronze-medal series, where, sadly, Towns and Randle might have found a ceiling.
Making matters more complicated: Towns is questionable for Thursday’s Game 5 against the Pacers. Would the Knicks take a mulligan on their trade? They would have Randle and Donte DiVincenzo (for the full ‘Nova Knicks), plus the 17th overall pick in next month’s draft. Randle owns a $30.9 million player option for next season. He can probably make more over the life of his next deal if he declines it, though the average annual value would still pale in comparison to Towns’ $53.1 million salary for next season.
The real question is which of those packages holds more value — the next three years of Towns or whatever Randle’s next contract is, plus DiVincenzo and the pick. The answer is probably similar. The only All-NBA player you can trade either for is the other, and that is the conclusion the Timberwolves and Knicks drew at the start of this season. They swapped problems for a new look, and now we have seen it.
There is a ceiling to how well you can perform with either Towns or Randle as a high-usage player, and while that ceiling is high, it may be short of a championship.
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