SI:AM | Karl-Anthony Towns Excels in Return to Minnesota As Strong Season Continues

His debut season in New York is going as well as anyone could have hoped.

Towns was nearly unstoppable in his return to Minnesota on Thursday. / Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m so glad my Saturday is wide open to enjoy wall-to-wall football.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏀 KAT shines in return to Minnesota
📝 Exam time for CFP teams
🐅 Dabo breaks with precedent

One cool KAT

Karl-Anthony Towns played his first game in Minneapolis as a visitor on Thursday night. After nine years with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Towns was traded to the New York Knicks in October as part of a blockbuster deal that also sent All-Star forward Julius Randle to Minnesota.

Towns got a hero’s welcome in his return to his old home, as the T-Wolves honored him with a tribute video during pregame lineup introductions. Then Towns went out and torched his former squad in a 133–107 Knicks win.

Towns was on fire, scoring 32 points on 10-of-12 shooting (including 5-for-5 from three) and adding 20 rebounds. He also had six assists and two steals. He’s the second player this season to have at least 30 points and 20 rebounds in a game (joining Domantas Sabonis) and it was the sixth such game in Towns’s career.

The Knicks went on a 20–0 run in the second quarter to take a 58–35 lead and never looked back. By the beginning of the third quarter, the Minnesota fans were showering the home team with boos.

32 finishes with 3️⃣2️⃣ PTS and 20 REB

have a GAME, @karltowns 👏 pic.twitter.com/XLE3TMWEPv

— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) December 20, 2024

“Get traded, come back and beat your team by 30—I mean, that’s everything you dream of,” Wolves star Anthony Edwards said. “I’m mad we lost, but on the inside, I’m super happy for him. That’s my dog.”

The Knicks have gotten everything they’ve wanted out of Towns in his first 25 games with New York. He’s averaging a team-high 25.0 points per game, his most since the 2019–20 season, and is leading the league with 14.2 rebounds per game—a career high. His .461 three-point shooting percentage is the best of his career and third highest in the league among big men (minimum 50 attempts).

Adding Towns has unlocked the Knicks’ full offensive potential. Last season, when Randle missed the second half of the year with a shoulder injury and the Knicks had to lean more heavily on Jalen Brunson offensively, New York ranked 19th in scoring (112.8 points per game) and seventh in offensive efficiency (118.2 points per 100 possessions). This year, the team ranks seventh in scoring (117.0 points per game) and second in efficiency (120.7 points per 100 possessions).

“Stuff is coming so much easier for them than it did last year,” one anonymous Eastern Conference scout told ESPN’s Chris Herring. “We knew the spacing would be better with Towns, but I didn’t think they’d be humming like this so quickly.”

The Knicks are rolling offensively because of something the Timberwolves learned long ago: Playing Towns at center presents nightmare matchups for opponents. But Towns was forced to play primarily at power forward in his final two years in Minnesota following the acquisition of Rudy Gobert. The move to New York has allowed Towns to return to his optimal role as a floor-stretching five.

“We used to call it the cheat code,” Minnesota coach Chris Finch said Thursday, referring to playing Towns at center. “It’s just a cheat code for great offense. His ability to score at all levels and distort the floor and all that kind of stuff, it’s definitely, definitely, definitely a driver of great offense.”

Towns and Brunson are forming the same sort of one-two scoring punch in New York that Towns and Edwards did in Minnesota. And with the Knicks’ other big offseason addition, swingman Mikal Bridges, also finding his rhythm and Josh Hart continuing to shoot threes at an improved rate, New York has other options capable of stepping up when their stars have an off night. Bridges had 29 on Thursday and defensive-minded backup center Precious Achiuwa had a season-best 13 points on 6-of-9 shooting.

The Knicks’ elite offense hasn’t made them an unstoppable team. They’re 17–10 after Thursday’s win, good for third in the Eastern Conference. But as the team continues to coalesce, and with the looming return of Mitchell Robinson set to bolster the defense, the Knicks are shaping up to be a serious contender in the East.

Usyk meets Fury in a rematch Saturday after the Ukrainian fighter won the first go-around in May. / Richard Pelham/Getty Images

The best of Sports Illustrated

• Today’s Digital Cover is Chris Mannix’s profile of Oleksandr Usyk ahead of his much-anticipated rematch with Tyson Fury on Saturday.

• It’s been a wild couple of weeks for some teams playing in the College Football Playoff. Pat Forde looks at how the schools with first-round games this weekend tried to balance preparation with final exams.

• Clemson is in the Playoff, but the most interesting news about the Tigers this week might be that Dabo Swinney signed a player out of the transfer portal for the first time. Bryan Fischer looks at Clemson’s recent slide and whether Swinney’s new approach can bring the program back to the top of the sport.

• An overlooked aspect of the Playoff’s first round is how it coincides with the NFL schedule. Albert Breer has a great breakdown of how the pro and college decisionmakers worked out the schedule for this loaded Saturday of football.

• Breer’s weekly mailbag leads with a look at what star Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson might be looking for in potential head coaching opportunities.

• Andrew Brandt’s weekly Business of Football column focuses on Bill Belichick’s move to North Carolina and what it says about the professionalization of college football.

• Mike Tirico was the guest on the latest episode of Jimmy Traina’s SI Media podcast.

• Max Schreiber spoke with the folks who are resurrecting the once-popular but long-dormant golf competition the Skins Game, which is set to return next year after nearly two decades.

• Lions running back David Montgomery might not be out for the rest of the season after all.

The top five…

… things I saw last night:
5. The final point of Penn State volleyball’s Final Four win over Nebraska. The Nittany Lions had lost the first two sets but came back to win and advance to their first national championship game in 10 years.
4. Josh Palmer’s concentration on this two-point conversion catch.
3. Anfernee Simons’s buzzer beater to lift the Trail Blazers over the Nuggets.
2. Keyonte George’s poster dunk.
1. Cameron Dicker’s successful free kick. The Chargers took advantage of an obscure rule and converted the NFL’s first fair catch free kick since 1976.