Karl-Anthony Towns has followed the plight of his boyhood team, the New York Knicks, more than most over the last three decades.

While he grew up in Edison, NJ, just 35 miles from Madison Square Garden, won a high school state title in 2012, and rose to the No. 1 national recruit in the Class of 2014 before attending Kentucky, Towns agonized alongside his fellow Knicks fans over the franchise’s dysfunction. 

New York made the playoffs just three times in 16 years between 2004 and 2020, averaging 49 losses per season during that stretch. There was the failed Stephon Marbury experiment and the Isiah Thomas tenure. After the brief reprieve provided by Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire, starting lineups featured the likes of Langston Galloway, Alexey Shved, Andrea Bargnani, and Lou Amundson. Jose Calderon was the starting point guard, and Tim Hardaway Jr. was calling falling officials safe instead of playing defense. 

The development of Frank Ntilikina and Kevin Knox never happened, and Kristaps Porzingis never materialized into the superstar that many thought he would be during his rookie season. 

By now, the turnaround has been well-documented. It started with the arrival of Leon Rose and the groundwork laid by Julius Randle to get the Knicks back into the playoffs in 2021 and hit its fever pitch with the acquisitions of Jalen Brunson, Towns, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges. 

After falling short in the conference final last season to the Indiana Pacers, the Knicks laid waste to whoever was put in front of them this postseason. They have won 11 straight games by a staggering average margin of 23.6 points. They eliminated the Atlanta Hawks in six games with a 51-point demolition. They swept the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round with a 30-point win in Game 4, and on Monday night in Cleveland, they finished off a sweep of the Cavaliers with a 37-point triumph to book their first ticket to the NBA Finals since 1999. 

Towns was three years old when the No. 8-seed Knicks went on that Cinderella run to a conference title. Brunson was two, but not far from it, as his dad, current assistant coach Rick Brunson, was a third-string guard on that team who played just 10 seconds during that five-game Finals loss to the San Antonio Spurs. 

Now, they are the authors of the best Knicks story in three decades, and now sit just four wins from lifting the franchise’s first championship trophy since 1973. 

“It means the world,” Towns began. “I grew up a Knicks fan, as documented. And I think what’s more of an honor is growing up in the area, I feel like the word hope has been gone from the New York Knicks’ name for a long time. For me to be a part of the team that revives hope in this city, it’s something special. It’s something really, really special. It’s an honor. That’s one of those things when I was growing up watching the Knicks, I was just hoping one day to put the jersey on. I never knew that I would be in this position, at this mic, talking about us going to the NBA Finals, and this city believing in us.”

Because the Knicks are largely unopposed within the city’s basketball landscape, unlike the splits provided by multiple teams sharing the same metropolitan area in the other Big 4 leagues, the buzz that consumes the Big Apple when this team is at its best is unrivaled. Thousands of fans have repeatedly filled the streets every game night for even just a shred of this experience; the traveling supporters that have packed arenas in Philadelphia and Cleveland have been in the thousands. 

Suddenly, there is once again pride in being associated with the New York Knicks.

“That speaks a lot to the camaraderie of this team, the character of this team, the willingness, the sacrifice everyone’s been willing to put forward for the betterment of the team,” Towns said. “There’s nowhere better in the world when the Garden has hope.”

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