New York Knicks star center Karl-Anthony Towns has the toughest basketball assignment on the planet right now.
Towns gets to guard rising San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama in the NBA Finals. Wembanyama has taken the NBA by storm this season in his third year, earning Defensive Player of the Year honors and third place in MVP voting.
It didn’t faze Towns as he challenged Wembanyama in a 105–95 Game 1 victory at San Antonio on June 3. Wembanyama scored 26 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, but Towns matched his rebound total with 12, along with 18 points.
“Just trying to make it difficult. He’s an amazing player, he’s a one-of-a-kind player in this NBA,” Towns told reporters afterward.
A French native and former No. 1 pick in 2023, Wembanayama has lived up to expectations this season, and he’s quickly becoming a premier player in the NBA. Wembanyama averaged 25 points and 11.5 rebounds in the regular season, as he helped the Spurs return to winning after a six-year playoff drought.
Knicks head coach Mike Brown didn’t have much time to prepare exclusively for Wembanyama since the Spurs went seven games with the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals. New York swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals and earned a week’s rest.
The Knicks didn’t show rust, and Towns came up big offensively in the fourth quarter in addition to his defensive performance against Wembanyama. Despite scoring 26 points, Wembanyama had to work for everything; he shot 6–21 from the field and 2–9 on three-pointers.
Towns went 7–15 from the field, and he dished four assists. His shooting protected the lead in the fourth quarter.
“He was amazing,” Brown told reporters regarding Towns.
“The double-double was huge. He came up with some timely buckets for us. He’s a problem.”
“You put a small guy on him, he’s got a chance to offensive rebound. If you put a big guy on him, he’s got a chance to pick-and-pop or go around guys. So, we gotta just keep trying to move him around based on who’s guarding him throughout the course of the ball game. But he was huge for us with his double-double.”
Also a No. 1 pick in 2015 with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Towns made the most of his NBA Finals debut. He spent his entire career with the Timberwolves until the past two seasons, after the team traded him to New York.
“I felt like a kid. It was just fun out here,” Towns told ESPN afterward. “This is something that as a kid, you always dream about. You always just hope to be an NBA player, let alone to be in the NBA Finals. I felt like I was a kid getting ready to go play in my Saturday AAU games and Sunday AAU games.”
Towns also drew inspiration from his late mother, Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, who died in 2020 from COVID-19 complications. He said he felt he “was seeing her in the stands” at the game.
“And it was really fun and really comforting because you know, Game 1 of the NBA Finals, you’re told how the pressure is going to be,” Towns added.
New York bulldozed its way through the Eastern Conference playoffs, but the Knicks do have pressure to end a 53-year NBA championship drought. The Knicks won the title in 1973 with Hall of Famers Willis Reed, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere, Jerry Lucas and Walt Frazier.
As for Wembanyama, he’s leading a Spurs team that last made the finals and won it in 2014. Wembanyama doesn’t want pressure to mount and wants to put Game 1 behind him as fast as possible.
“I’m gonna figure it out. I was bad tonight. It’s not more complicated than that,” Wembanyama told reporters afterward.
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