Karl-Anthony Towns will go down as one of the best shooting big men in NBA history, but had the Knicks center listened to his skeptics, that would have never come to fruition.
“I worked on my game,” Towns said Sunday, replying to a question from New Orleans Pelicans rookie guard Jeremiah Fears at an NBA Finals media availability.
“When I was younger, that wasn’t something that was supposed to happen. You’re laughed at. You’re told, ‘What are you doing? You’re wasting your time. You’re never going to make it to college doing that.'”
Fast forward to the present day, and history shows Towns was ahead of his time.
The 7-footer is a career 39.7% shooter from 3-point range over his 11-year NBA career, and in six of those seasons, Towns shot at least 40.0% on 3-pointers.
Entering Monday night’s Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, Towns was shooting 48.1% on 3-pointers in this year’s playoffs.
His shooting prowess has loomed large in these NBA Finals, as Towns’ mere presence on the perimeter has often drawn 7-4 San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyana — the NBA’s unanimous Defensive Player of the Year and premier shot-blocker — out of the paint.
“A lot of people are going to tell you, ‘No,’ what they think you need to do to make it to the NBA, to do all these things,” Towns, 30, said. “But at the end of the day, you’ve got to walk on your own path, write your own story. And that’s what I did.”
Towns was a top recruit out of St. Joseph High School in Metuchen, N.J. He was the No. 1 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft out of Kentucky. A six-time NBA All-Star, Towns spent his first nine seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves before he was traded to the Knicks in October of 2024.
Earlier in his career, critics questioned Towns’ reliance on 3-point shooting. But any questions about Towns’ physicality have been answered emphatically in these playoffs, and particularly in the Finals, where on defense, he limited Wembanyana to 7-of-19 shooting over Games 1 and 2.
“He’s been great,” Jalen Brunson said after the Knicks’ Game 2 win. “I think he’s been pretty phenomenal on both sides of the ball, the things he’s been able to do throughout this entire playoffs. But obviously here now, he’s been great.”
Towns debuted after Dallas‘ Dirk Nowitzki had already transcended the position as a 7-footer with an elite outside game.
But Towns helped usher in an era in which more and more centers — including Wembanyama and Nikola Jokić, the three-time NBA MVP of the Denver Nuggets — are deadly 3-point shooters.
“People come back to me and give me all the congrats and congratulations and all this love for something they didn’t help with; they told me to do the opposite,” Towns told the 19-year-old Fears.
“So, that’s how life always goes. Everyone’s got an opinion until someone actually does the work.”
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