For Knicks' Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, fathers know best
New York Knicks’ assistant coach Rick Brunson talking with his son Jalen Brunson in the 3rd quarter while playing the Cleveland Caverliers at Madison Square Garden in New York City, April 23, 2023. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
HOUSTON
There is no guidebook to follow.
When you throw together a newly constructed roster, as the Knicks have done, there is no way to know whether it will take a week, a month or even a season to grow together.
The Bucks’ Damian Lillard still talks about the difficulty of adjusting to a new team a year after the trade that brought him from Portland. It happens even to the most talented players in the game.
But the Knicks’ two biggest stars — Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns — have something in common that could accelerate the process. They are sons of coaches, born and raised in the game.
The legend of Brunson’s upbringing with his father, Rick, pushing and prodding him as a child while the elder Brunson was working his way through a hard-fought NBA playing career is well known. And with Rick Brunson serving as a Knicks assistant coach now, it’s easy to see the fruits of it in Jalen Brunson’s game.
Rick Brunson is there during timeouts, guiding pregame workouts and continuing to serve as a sounding board for the Knicks’ star point guard.
“I think when you’re the son of a coach, regardless of what level, I think you’re consistently talking about what you can do to be better,” Jalen Brunson said. “For the most part, at least from my experience, I don’t think there’s any trick to it.
“It’s just that you’re in this constant mode of learning. Since you have that since you’re a kid, you learn more, you understand more. I don’t know. It’s just more of a natural feel.”
Towns grew up the same way. His father, Karl, was a ferocious rebounder for Monmouth University and still holds the single-season rebounding record. He then became a coach at Piscataway Technical High School.
While Karl-Anthony Towns played only one season of AAU ball for his father (“My dad wouldn’t start me, made me the sixth man,” he joked), he would practice with the high school JV team.
It began when he was just a fifth-grader. His dad used the team practices as an after-school activity rather than getting a sitter to oversee him at home.
While the Knicks are quick to point out that this is a work in progress, you can see the pieces beginning to come together. On Friday night in Detroit, Towns had seven assists. He was working from the perimeter and found Brunson and others repeatedly cutting to the basket.
“I think it’s just a credit to my father,” Towns said. “He was a high school coach, a damn good one, too, in Jersey, Piscataway. Just being with him every single day, just watching him coach and just garnering IQ every single day.
“[I learned] the right way to play the game of basketball, ways you could help your team win, and the way he taught me. So that’s a shout-out to my father for being the man who taught me the game of basketball at this level.”
While Towns and Brunson are veterans now and have played and learned the game at the highest level, their fathers still are huge factors as coaches for them. The elder Brunson not only is a key part of the Knicks’ staff but is the voice in Jalen’s ear during the game.
“[We talk] all the time,” Jalen said. “College, high school. We don’t talk after games now because we see each other throughout the game. OK, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.
“I like it. It’s helped me out.”
And Karl Towns Sr. travels to nearly every game, same as he did when his son was with the Timberwolves.
Wing stop
The Knicks have begun to see the possibilities of what the long-armed pairing of OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges can be defensively, highlighted by a 16-steal night in Detroit on Friday.
As the young Pistons squad tried to get into their offense, every flaw seemed to be met by an aggressive attack by Anunoby.
With Bridges’ ability, like Anunoby’s, to switch on to nearly any player — as well as the versatility of Josh Hart and even Brunson and Towns — the Knicks can create a disrupting defense.
“When you see things ahead, it makes you quicker, and that leads to a lot of disruption,” Tom Thibodeau said. “And [Anunoby] knows how to read plays. If someone is loose with the ball, he’s very active with his hands.”
“He’s a defense unto himself,” Hart said. “One-on-one, we trust him on anyone. When he’s off the ball, it’s crazy. He pounces. He’s in a gap. He anticipates. He lunges at you. I’ve never seen anything like that.
"First time I saw him do that against Andrew Nembhardt a couple games ago and Andrew Nembhardt, he was like, “Oh.” He was surprised. He had like three back dribbles from that. His ability to obviously make plays one-on-one, but he’s able to roam and create havoc. We want him to gamble and make plays himself. We know we’re going to be able to rotate and fly around and put out fires if he doesn’t get the ball.”
Said Anunoby, “See, I don’t see it as gambling. I see it as being aggressive and making the offense uncomfortable. Not just letting them do whatever they want [and] just making them back up or pick up their dribble.”
This has prompted Hart to try to create a nickname for the pairing of Anunoby and Bridges.
“We came up with Wing Stop or Wingy Hut Jr., him and Bridges],” Hart said, explaining the second choice is “from SpongeBob. Weenie Hut Jr. We can go with that one.”
“Yeah, he said that,” Anunoby said. “He says everything. He’ll say something else tomorrow.”
Career choices
One of the reasons Towns didn’t play more in the summer for his father was that he was busy with something he loved nearly as much — playing baseball. He was a pitcher who was clocked at more than 90 mph while in high school. He also was a solid hitter and preferred spending his summers on the diamond rather than on the court.
“He wanted to play baseball,” Towns Sr. said. “I’d bring him along on our AAU games and had a uniform for him tucked away but would tell him, ‘You picked baseball.’ ”
Warmup work
Thibodeau is an advocate of having rookies earn their way into the rotation. He wants them to learn how to be a professional first in their work ethic and habits.
While he’s still waiting for a real opportunity, Tyler Kolek has shown a willingness to work. He gets extra work in pregame, serving as a sort of point guard as the rest of the team warms up. He caddies for starters by feeding them for their shots and even pointing out to the ball boys and girls where to pass out the balls that they rebound. It ensures that the shots go to the starting five who will be on the floor.
“They’re the starters,” Kolek said. “I just want to make sure they’re getting the shots and work they need.”
A little football
It might tell you something about the Knicks’ roster that rather than bolt Detroit after Friday’s game for the nightlife of Houston, the team opted to remain and most of the players were heading to Ann Arbor for the Oregon-Michigan football game.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.