Karl-Anthony Towns Knows the Knicks' Win Was Bigger Than Basketball

David Marchese sits down with Karl-Anthony Towns a month after the New York Knicks won their first championship in 53 years, and Towns admits he still flinches when strangers call him 'champ.' The centerpiece is Game 4 of the Finals against the Spurs: down almost 30 in the first half, Towns told the locker room to remember the Boston comeback the year before and 'swing for the fences.' He describes reading San Antonio as a young team protecting a lead instead of building one, and the title-swinging play that followed — a set designed for Towns that drew two defenders, a quick Jalen Brunson three, and inbounder OG Anunoby crashing the glass for a tip-in Towns calls one of the greatest plays in Finals history. Towns swears he was positioned to dunk it if the tip rimmed out.

The conversation keeps circling back to Towns's mother, who died of COVID complications in 2020. He frames the title as repayment for the time he spent in gyms instead of with her, and says the most meaningful post-win embrace was with Patrick Ewing — a friend and mentor who, in Towns's telling, finally exhaled after decades of carrying Knicks misery. There's lighter material too: fiancée Jordyn Woods's handbag becoming a team lucky charm displayed at the Guggenheim, trash-talking Victor Wembanyama in the Finals, and Marchese's wife's theory that Brunson is the dad of the team and Towns the mom, which Towns happily accepts.

Towns also gets unusually candid about the business of basketball: being told, not asked, about the trade from Minnesota after nine years — his first call was to Jordyn in Paris, 'take me off speaker right now' — plus Kevin Garnett's mentorship, choosing basketball over a Yankees dream after his Piscataway friends pulled him back to the park, and how new coach Mike Brown built on Tom Thibodeau's foundation and finally made Towns the offensive hub at the top of the key, the role he'd lobbied for all season. He closes on the repeat question: the Knicks have to relearn being the favorite without losing the underdog snarl.