Knicks lose to Golden State, but Karl-Anthony Towns shows Draymond Green he's not ducking anybody
Golden State forward Draymond Green defends against Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns during the first half of an NBA game Saturday in San Francisco. Credit: AP/Benjamin Fanjoy
SAN FRANCISCO — It was a week ago Sunday that Karl-Anthony Towns first had to address Draymond Green’s negative comments, and at the time, he seemed sincere as he said, “I choose to approach that with love and not hate.”
That clearly was not true.
Love was not the mood for the Knicks as they fought through the final stop of a five-game West Coast trip in which they lost their most important player, dealt with odd controversies and even got heated among themselves.
Towns played with a fire rarely seen, Josh Hart and Tom Thibodeau got into a heated exchange in a fourth-quarter huddle, and still the Knicks found themselves tied with Golden State in the final minutes Saturday night. But the Knicks just didn’t have enough and fell to Golden State, 97-94, at the Chase Center. It matched their lowest scoring output of the season.
Towns finished with 29 points and 12 rebounds before fouling out in the final seconds. He repeatedly attacked Green, Jimmy Butler and whatever defender Golden State put in front of him.
“Hell yeah, you want to help your team win,” Towns said. “So wanted to bring that energy to the team, especially early in the game. Just was trying to do that to impact winning.”
The Knicks (42-24) trailed by nine in the fourth quarter, but Towns dragged them back into the game and Mikal Bridges’ jumper tied the score at 88 with 2:52 left.
But Towns misfired on two potential go-ahead three-pointers. Then he had the ball at midcourt and attempted to drive from there at Green, but he was called for his fifth foul as the ball was knocked loose and Green recovered it. Green’s two free throws extended Golden State’s lead to four with 1:06 to play.
After Deuce McBride’s turnover, Green hit an uncontested layup for a 94-88 lead, and as the Knicks called time with 25.8 seconds to play, Green mimicked Steph Curry’s signal for putting the opposition to sleep. But sleep was not going to come easily to the Knicks after this game.
OG Anunoby, who hit a three-pointer with two-tenths of a second left, had 23 points and nine rebounds and Bridges and McBride each added 19 points. Curry scored 28 points. Green had only nine, but the four in the final minutes allowed him to back up his talk.
“That was fun, really fun,” he said. “Good to see KAT show up and play like that. He played hard, played well. He was physical, probably most physical I’ve ever seen him. He had a little extra motivation, so that made the game really fun. That was great.
“I saw his answer to y’all. He kind of fed into what everybody else was saying. So it was a little extra motivation. But I like battles, so if it forces a guy to play harder and more physical, that’s great. I ain’t never seen him willing to talk. That was great, really fun. He had a really good game.”
Towns wasn’t the only Knick who showed fire. In a huddle during a timeout with 8:13 left in the game, Hart, who wound up scoreless and 0-for-7 from the field, and Thibodeau had a heated exchange, with assistant coaches and teammates trying to calm Hart as he exited the huddle.
“I love Josh,” Thibodeau said. “It was whatever to get us going, to try to get us going.”
“You all know me. You know my feelings towards Thibs,” Hart said. “You’re not going to find a more loyal player. I love Thibs. I think that was just my frustration coming out with the flow of the game, my own individual performance. It was just something that just happened in the heat of the moment. I’m a competitor. Obviously, he’s a competitor. So sometimes those things happen. I don’t think it really, it doesn’t affect our relationship. It doesn’t show anything of what’s going on. It’s just two extremely competitive people in a fiery moment. I love Thibs. I love what he’s doing.”
In this latest installment of Green trolling Towns, a distasteful one as he speculated that Towns had missed the meeting between the two teams in New York because he was ducking Butler — without checking and learning that Towns was in Los Angeles to attend the funeral of a close family friend — Towns had taken the high road in interviews.
But Towns was playing with a different temperament from the very start. On the first play of the game, he blew by Green, and as Butler slid over to contest it, Towns rose up to dunk it and Butler dipped out of the way. By the time the game was six minutes old, Towns had piled up 11 points and five rebounds, with eight of the points coming in the paint.
As Towns set up defensively against Green in the second quarter, the two jostled for position, Towns was called for his third foul and Green immediately began signaling to the Knicks’ bench to get him out of the game. This time Towns pursued Green instead of heading to the bench, jawing at him as Green continued to wave his arm toward the Knicks’ bench, with referee Ray Acosta between them.
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.
