Karl-Anthony Towns leads the way as the Knicks hold on and take a 2-0 series lead in the NBA Finals.
• Download the NBA App
• Complete coverage: 2026 NBA Finals
NEW YORK – Some of the greatest individual showdowns within the NBA Finals framework of determining a season’s best team have come at the center position.
Wilt Chamberlain vs. Willis Reed or Nate Thurmond. Kareem Adul-Jabbar vs. Dave Cowens or Robert Parish. Hakeem Olajuwon vs. Patrick Ewing or Shaquille O’Neal.
And now the 2026 Finals is offering up another: Karl-Anthony Towns vs. Victor Wembanyama. Two towering talents, stronger than you might expect, improbably skilled, passionate about winning, committed to his brothers in the locker room, cutting a wide swath through this postseason, and getting better day by day.
Chances are, you heard far more heading into this championship series about the San Antonio Spurs’ long, lean young star than about Towns. Wembanyama is the NBA’s next big thing, literally. He stands 7-foot-4, he’s got a European flair and he’s a little ahead of schedule, his future arriving in our present. He picked up his first major award this past season – the only unanimous Kia Defensive Player of the Year in that honor’s history – and at 22 has led the Spurs back to the Finals for the first time since 2014.
Towns, in relative terms, came into this round as another Wemby sparring partner, latest in the line of playoff big men that featured Portland’s Donovan Clingan, Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert and OKC’s Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein. All of them posed challenges to Wembanyama and his team, all of them ultimately were dispatched.
Towns and the Knicks, however, spent the Finals’ first two games hitting the snooze button on this GOAT aspirant and dynasty in the making. They are positioned to make the Spurs wait another year at least, winning Games 1 and 2 at Frost Bank Center to become only the third Finals team to open with two road victories.
Individually, Towns not only has won his matchup with Wembanyama, he has been the most effective and impactful performer overall. If this were a best-of-three affair, the 7-footer would have been named the Finals MVP after New York’s 105-104 victory Friday in San Antonio.
As it is, he will do what he can to stay locked in for at least the next two games at Madison Square Garden Monday and Wednesday and whatever comes after. If – as they say in the postseason sports world – necessary.
“He’s been great,” said Knicks guard Jalen Brunson. “He’s been pretty phenomenal on both sides of the ball, the things he’s been able to do throughout this entire playoffs but obviously here now.”
Towns finding a flow state
At both ends, and for reading and reacting both on the court and off, this might be the best version of Towns yet. He is wrapping up his second season with the Knicks after nine years in Minnesota, and through the first two games has given New York just what it needs without trying to force too much.
“It comes with experience,” Towns said. “I’ve been in playoff series where I’ve done too much and it was the detriment to the team, and I’ve been in playoff series where I’ve done too little and it was a detriment to the team.
“It comes when you learn what truly is best for the team. Being able to find that balance of being aggressive and impacting the game with your skill set, but also utilizing that skill set to make others better. … I think right now, I’m doing the best I’ve done at it.”
Towns is averaging 19.5 ppg, 12.5 rpg, 4.0 apg in the Finals, while shooting 56% overall and 43% on threes. Defensively, he is holding opponents to 34.5% shooting, 16.7% from beyond the arc.
Unlike big-man days of yore, centers don’t spend entire games locked in bruising contact. But according to NBA stats, Towns has been more efficient when dealing directly with Wembanyama. Compare his 16 points, three assists, two turnovers and 58.3% shooting to Wemby’s 20 points, one assist, seven turnovers and 36.8% accuracy.
Karl-Anthony Towns has recorded the most assists by a Knicks center in a single postseason, with 90
Zoom out to look at Towns’ work in the 2026 Playoffs overall, his effective field goal percentage has jumped from 55.6% in the regular season to 64.5%. He is shooting better in the paint and taking a greater share of his shots from there. Yet Towns’ 3-point accuracy is up from 36.8% to 48.1% and he is both earning and making more free throws.
His work defending pick-and-rolls is up as well: In the 339 plays in which Towns has been the screener’s man, according to tracking data, the Knicks have allowed just 0.81 points per chance when the screen has led directly to a short, turnover or trip to the line, down from 1.02 in the regular season. Towns has blitzed 12.7% of ball-screens in the playoffs, more than double his rate (5.6%) in the regular season.
Then there’s this: Towns’ plus/minus this postseason through 16 games is +239. That’s second all-time to Steph Curry’s +244 in 2017, and the Knicks still have at least two games to play. He leads all Finals participants this spring at +25.
How does Towns explain his many improvements?
“Just consistently working on my game,” he said between Games 1 and 2. “No days off. Always consistently finding something to do to take my game to the next level. On the days you call off days, it’s a lot of treatment.
“Right after [Game 1], we got to a two-and-a-half-hour treatment session to just get right for the next game. The work never stops. When the cameras stop rolling and there ain’t no NBA trophy around, no basketball to dribble, you find another way to give yourself an edge.”
Growth doesn’t stop at reaching full height
Here’s one of those ways that doesn’t get talked about as much: Towns’ maturity. He is 30 years old, and the criticism that came early in his career – that he was “soft,” an indictment among athletes that goes beyond style of play to implicitly question everything about a fellow – is mostly gone.
People might remember that awkward situation when Towns’ former Minnesota teammate Jimmy Butler got in his and Andrew Wiggins’ faces during 2018 training camp. Butler, a self-styled “alpha” across his 15-year career, wasn’t happy with his contract so he went after the Wolves’ two young talents, each already signed to bigger deals. The veteran crossed several lines while barking about Towns’ and Wiggins’ commitment and toughness.
Towns has changed that narrative with his play, a tighter rein on his emotions and flailing limbs, and time. So much so that Charles Barkley offered a completely revised assessment after the “Inside The NBA” postgame show Friday.
“He was criticized in Minnesota,” Barkley said. “He was criticized in New York. But the MVP of the Finals is gonna be Karl-Anthony Towns. He played two of the best games I’ve ever seen a big man play. That man earned his flowers.”
This run to and so far through the Finals holds a greater significance for Towns, however, than proving wrong some critics.
The tragedy that hit him in April 2020 when his mother Jacqueline Cruz died due to complications from COVID-19 took Towns years to process. Only through time, reflection and faith – and with the love of his fiancée Jordyn Woods – has Towns managed to channel her memory into a positive influence in his play.
At this point, outside of San Antonio anyway, Towns has become a bit of a sentimental favorite because of his story and openness in sharing it. He has a basketball family for the time being in the orange-and-blue uniforms. And he plays now as if he still were that youngster playing to delight and entertain his mom, dad Karl and other family members.
“It means a lot for my mother,” Towns told reporters. “When she emigrated from [the Dominican Republic] to New York, she saw Madison Square Garden for the first time and saw the energy the city has for [MSG] and the Knicks … To be able to have this moment in Knicks history where we’re back here, means a lot to me, my loved ones, to be part of the Knicks history that’s doing this.
“You never know what life has for you. You never know if you’ll get another opportunity. But just appreciating it and being grateful that you do get this opportunity is everything.”
* * *
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
