Karl-Anthony Towns continued his sensational debut season in New York with 44 points in the Knicks‘ 149-148 overtime win over the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday, but he nearly threw the game away at the end of regulation with a boneheaded inbound pass in the waning seconds.
After Atlanta’s Georges Niang made a 3-pointer to cut New York’s lead to three with 9.2 seconds remaining, Towns, who could’ve just called a timeout if he had any doubt about getting the ball safely inbounds, decided to float a cupcake pass intended for Mikal Bridges.
Bridges was trying to seal Dyson Daniels, who happens to be the league’s top thief by a mile with three steals per game. Of course, Daniels stole the ball and immediately went up for a layup. He missed, but he was fouled.
Daniels made the first and missed the second, but the Hawks scrambled for the rebound and Josh Hart wound up fouling Trae Young 40 feet from the basket. Young made the two free throws and suddenly the Knicks went from a sure victory to having to grind it out in overtime.
Nevertheless, all’s well that ends well as the Knicks recovered from that meltdown and pulled out a one-point victory in overtime.
With the win, the Knicks improved to 36-18, which is the best record they have posted at this point in the season this century.
Towns having historic season for Knicks
Towns, who has to be in top-five MVP consideration, posted this performance on the heels of the 40 points and 12 rebounds he put on the Pacers on Tuesday. As a result, he is just the fifth player in Knicks history to register consecutive 40-point games, per CBS Sports research, joining Patrick Ewing, Bernard King, Jalen Brunson and Carmelo Anthony.
This is the first time in Towns’ career that he has cracked the 40 code in consecutive games. And with the 10 rebounds he added (the overtime period allowed him to grab two more), he became the second player in Knicks history to go for at least 40 and 10 in two straight games, joining Ewing (Towns had 12 boards on Tuesday), who did so twice in 1990.
This was Towns’ fifth 40-point game this season. That’s the second-most for any center in Knicks history, trailing only the 11 that Patrick Ewing recorded in 1989-90. This was also Towns’ fifth 40-10 game for the Knicks, which is also the second-most in a single season in franchise history, trailing Ewing’s eight in 1989-90.
