Karl-Anthony Towns can see the future.
In Game 1 of the Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals series, Towns was caught telling teammates to keep playing great defense and that the offense will pick up eventually.
“We gotta keep playing defense this way. This will win us the game,” Towns said. “Our offense will always catch up. It did in Game 1 in Cleveland. We’ll be fine.”
Towns was referring to the first game of the Eastern Conference Finals in which the Knicks came back from a 22-point deficit in the fourth quarter against the Cavaliers to win in overtime.
In a less extreme, but still impressive fashion, Towns and the Knicks made a 14-point comeback in the first game of the NBA Finals on Wednesday to win 105-95.
According to ESPN Analytics, they had as little as a 7.4% chance of winning at one point.
Tasked with stopping Victor Wembanyama, Towns rose to the occasion in Game 1 with 18 points, 12 rebounds and four assists.
In the 34 minutes the big man was on the court, the Knicks outscored the Spurs by 11 points.
“I don’t know what it was. But I just felt a calm and a peace that I don’t know, had to be coming from the woman above,” he said in an on-court interview after the game.
Towns was referring to his late mother, Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, who died in April 2020.
“In a way I felt like I was seeing her in the stands,” he said.
Towns has been waiting his whole career to play in the NBA Finals, falling in the conference finals the past two seasons.
The former Timberwolves star recorded 10 points, including two 3-pointers, four rebounds and a block in the third quarter as the Knicks began their comeback.
“You just trust your work and you trust your decision-making, and I always say [I want to be] aggressive in play-making,” Towns said.
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