When a 46-point explosion doesn’t satisfy a franchise’s All-Star in a loss, that’s when they know they have a winner on their hands. Karl-Anthony Towns was not about to toot his own horn after his scoring barrage in the New York Knicks’ 124-123 loss to the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night. Neither was he content with letting his feet rest after the game.
Knicks: Karl-Anthony Towns stays behind after Bulls loss to work on free throws
The Kentucky product stayed on the Madison Square Garden floor after his Knicks dropped their second game in their last three contests to the Bulls. He could be seen putting up free throws with a sense of determination, as New York Basketball shared on X after the matchup.
Towns went 4-8 from the charity stripe on the affair. That marked his worst free throw percentage in any game of the young season. The former 2015 No. 1 overall pick is shooting 82.3 percent from the foul line through 11 games played. He’s converting 4.6 of his 5.6 free-throw attempts. Nevertheless, the 50 percent clip he converted in front of his home fans was not acceptable, and more so, Towns likely did some mental math in his head.
Despite his strong play, Towns is not satisfied with his performance in a losing effort, as he told SNY’s Ian Begley:
“I don’t care about that. If there’s no ‘W’ attached to it, it’s a bad night,” Towns said per Begley’s post on X.
Towns converting better clip from the foul line may have helped the Knicks win
The Knicks lost by one point. He missed four free throws. The common denominator? Even one more made free throw could have changed the entire outcome of the game. To make matters worse, two of his four misses came in the fourth quarter, and they came in consecutive trips at the 5:56 mark with New York down 108-107.
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Despite the blunders, the New Jersey native looked dominant on the night, attacking the rim and finishing with authority throughout. Nevertheless, him putting up extra shots in the Garden shows that he cares about winning, and comes part in parcel with his play-silencing detractors who for years labeled him as soft. Towns will look to keep up his fringe-MVP level play and get the Knicks (5-6) back to .500 in their next game against the Brooklyn Nets on Friday at 7:30 PM ET.
