There have been so many nights in Karl-Anthony Towns’ career in which he has scored more points, grabbed more rebounds, hit more 3-pointers and appeared on more highlights than the 18 points, 12 rebounds and one block he delivered in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
He has never appeared on a grander stage than the one in San Antonio on Wednesday night. He has never faced a more imposing physical challenge than San Antonio’s towering Victor Wembanyama. And he has never played better than he did in the New York Knicks’ 105-95 victory that wrestled homecourt advantage away from the Spurs.
Maybe the control and composure that he showed amid such heat and intensity should not have come as such a surprise. These are the moments, when the arena is hot and everyone is yelling at him, that feel closest to his mother. Jacqueline Cruz died in 2020 due to complications from COVID-19, robbing the Towns family of its matriarch and KAT of his biggest fan. He could always hear her voice above the din in any building he was playing in, and he felt her presence in Game 1.
“I don’t want to sound sugarcoating or anything like that,” he told Shaquille O’Neal on ESPN’s “Inside the NBA” postgame show. “I don’t know what it was, but I just felt a calm and a peace that had to be come from the woman above. I felt really confident about today. I felt good. I felt like a kid. It was just fun out here.”
The words control and composure were rarely associated with Jacqueline in a basketball arena. Towns’ father, Karl, has always said that he had to sit in another section of the stands so he could focus on the game without Jacqueline screaming in his ear while she cheered for her son.
On a famously volatile night in Philadelphia in 2019, Towns, who played for the Minnesota Timberwolves at the time, and rival Joel Embiid were ejected for fighting and later got into an ugly war of words on social media. An enduring image from that night, one that still brings smiles to the Towns clan to this day, was Jacqueline standing above the tunnel, pointing and yelling at Embiid as he walked off the court and Big Karl tried to restrain her.
“I play this game more because I just love watching my family members seeing me play a game I was very good and successful at,” Towns said months after her passing in 2020. “It always brought a smile for me when I saw my mom at the baseline and in the stands and stuff, and having a good time watching me play.”
She has been gone for six years, but only in the physical sense. Towns has tattoos behind his ear and on his forearm honoring her. And when he brings her up in interviews like he did on Wednesday night, it is his way of paying tribute and keeping her memory alive.
“In a way, I felt like I was seeing her in the stands,” he told O’Neal. “It was fun. It was really fun. It was really comforting because Game 1 of the NBA Finals, you’re told all the pressure there’s going to be and everything is. I don’t know.”
The tranquility was reminiscent of a scene hours before another significant triumph in his career, when his Timberwolves beat the defending champion Denver Nuggets in Game 7 of the 2024 Western Conference semifinals. On the day of the game, with so much pressure on the Timberwolves to return to the conference finals for the first time in 20 years, Towns stayed after shootaround to sit quietly in an empty Ball Arena and wait for inspiration to arrive.
He scored 23 points and grabbed 12 rebounds in that game, sealing the victory with a putback dunk in the closing minutes. As he walked out of the arena that night, he spoke of the serenity that he felt in that moment earlier in the day, like his mother putting her arm around him and telling him that everything was going to be OK.
Towns said he felt his mother’s presence again during last season’s playoffs, when he led the Knicks past the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals on Dominican Mother’s Day.
Knicks fans have shown an uncanny ability to secure tickets and take over road arenas throughout this thrilling playoff run, which has included 12 straight wins for a team seeking its first championship since 1973.
Jacqueline found her way into Frost Bank Arena on Wednesday night as well, but she didn’t need a seat. She was not yelling to drown out Spurs fans and fire Karl up, but whispering in her son’s ear — right above that 4:13 tattoo — to calm him down. She saw him stymie Wembanyama, holding him to 2-for-12 shooting on shots in which he was the closest defender. She saw Towns carry the load offensively in the first three quarters while Jalen Brunson was finding his way and trying to shrug off knee and ankle soreness.
She saw him.
“It felt like a certain presence was here that was very comforting and very loving,” Towns said, “and I felt like I could have fun out here in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, which is the weirdest thing because you expect the pressure to be at the highest.”
