![\"Karl-Anthony](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Karl-Anthony-Towns-3.jpg\")
Karl-Anthony Towns, who has been battling a quad injury, may not play in the Knicks\u2019 preseason finale on Friday night. Getty Images<\/p>\nKnicks coach Mike Brown would prefer to use the preseason finale Friday night as a dress rehearsal for next week\u2019s regular-season opener.<\/p>\n
But four of the Knicks\u2019 top six rotation players did not practice Thursday, with Karl-Anthony Towns (quad) and OG Anunoby (ankle) joining injured Josh Hart (back) and Mitchell Robinson (load management) on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
That makes their availability uncertain at best for Friday\u2019s preseason home game against the Hornets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like to play our guys as close to normal rotation [and minutes] as possible. \u2026 But I\u2019m not sure who\u2019s gonna play [Friday],\u201d Brown said at the team\u2019s Tarrytown practice facility.<\/p>\n
The Knicks said Anunoby, who tweaked his left ankle on Wednesday, is day to day, while Towns worked out individually on the side during Thursday\u2019s session.<\/p>\n
Karl-Anthony Towns, who has been battling a quad injury, may not play in the Knicks\u2019 preseason finale on Friday night. Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Knicks are taking a cautious approach with the oft-injured Robinson, who made 35 combined appearances late last season and in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Hart has been dealing with lower back spasms<\/a> since taking a fall in an exhibition game<\/a> earlier this month in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does impact us, because Josh is an extremely important piece of what trying to accomplish here,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnd missing time, it\u2019s not easy or simple, however you want to call it, to just pick up and go. Great part about it, Josh is a very intelligent human being. He\u2019s got a great feel for the game.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s going to help out a lot, but it\u2019s just gonna take a little longer than what you had hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins has been among the biggest national media supporters of Jalen Brunson and the Knicks in recent years, but he doesn\u2019t expect them to end their NBA championship drought this season.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t, and you know I\u2019m a \u2018Big Body\u2019 Brunson fan, but I think that the championship is going to stay in the Western Conference,\u201d Perkins told reporters on a conference call. \u201cI think all the [West] teams are just better, regardless of who makes it \u2014 whether it\u2019s Denver, OKC, Dallas, Houston.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cBut I do think the Knicks should be the favorite to make it to the NBA Finals [out of the] Eastern Conference. I know a lot of people picked the Cavs. I\u2019m not a fan or a believer of the Cavs. I\u2019m to the point now where they have to show me, especially with a Donovan Mitchell-led team.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m banking on the Knicks making it to the NBA Finals, but as far as them winning it all, I can\u2019t say that. The NBA champion is going to be a team out of West.\u201d<\/p>\n The Knicks signed former Thunder and Spurs forward Isaiah Roby to an Exhibit 10 contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knicks coach Mike Brown would prefer to use the preseason finale Friday night as a dress rehearsal for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[61628,36782,25161,355,361,19560,99],"class_list":["post-230573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-josh-hart","tag-karl-anthony-towns","tag-mitchell-robinson","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-og-anunoby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"OG](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/OG-Anunoby-1.jpg\")
OG Anunoby, who did not play in the Knicks\u2019 preseason loss to the Wizards on Oct. 13, is battling an ankle injury heading the Knicks\u2019 Friday preseason finale. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n