Knicks path past Hawks starts with Karl-Anthony Towns: ‘We really want him to be aggressive’

Karl-Anthony Towns respects the Atlanta Hawks. More importantly, he respects their starting center, Onyeka Okongwu.

Yet the numbers say otherwise.

Towns is averaging 28 points and 13 rebounds over his last nine games against the Hawks. He’s had a game with 19 points, 19 rebounds and five assists, a game with 44 points, and three more games with 30 or more since the trade that brought him from the Minnesota Timberwolves to New York in the summer of 2024.

How disrespectful.

This is the version of Towns — the dog — the Knicks will need for their first-round series against the Hawks, because Atlanta’s roster is tailor-made to make Jalen Brunson work harder for his buckets. And this season, for Brunson, has been about working smarter, not harder.

This season has been about trust — trusting his teammates, beginning with Towns, to share in the burden of lifting the Knicks to an NBA Finals appearance for the first time since 1999. And the Knicks, with a pair of seven-footers, have a clear edge they can lean into in the first round, not just through Towns, but also Mitchell Robinson, who dominates smaller front courts on a nightly basis.

Provided the Knicks prioritize exploiting their most obvious mismatch in Round 1.

“For the most part right now, this whole matchup is basically on-paper,” Brunson said after practice at the team’s Tarrytown training facility on Wednesday. “So we gotta go out there and just do what we gotta do, and obviously we want to take care of business. It’s going to take one game at a time, and it’s not going to be easy, whatsoever.”

It won’t be easy — not at all. But it should be decisive. The Knicks are the better team than the Atlanta Hawks. And they’re not the same Knicks teams of years past — the ones that unraveled when defenses ratcheted up the pressure on New York’s All-Star captain.

No. Brunson is a willing passer entering the playoffs on the hottest playmaking run of his career. Which is why confidence should be at an all-time high — not just to get through Round 1, but maybe something more. Maybe to punch the franchise’s first NBA Finals appearance in more than a quarter-century.

The Knicks, beginning with Brunson, Towns and head coach Mike Brown, won’t look that far ahead. The Hawks pose enough problems as is. This is a team that traded away perennial All-Star Trae Young and still had enough firepower, size and defensive length to nearly steal a game from the Knicks in a 98-95 loss on April 6.

After that game, Hawks head coach Quin Snyder said he believed, with a few tweaks, his team could have won that night. Maybe even in a seven-game series.

“They’re very well-coached. They have a lot of pieces. They’re good at adjustments, clearly being able to have a pretty big trade mid-season and then adjust to be the team that they are now,” Brown said on Wednesday. “And so they’ve been playing great. We’ve gotta be ready for the challenge when it comes on Saturday.”

The battle will be as hard-fought as the Knicks allow, because they have a trump card up their sleeves — and the Hawks, who haven’t had an answer for it since Towns’ arrival via trade, won’t have one in the first round.

Mouse in the house — or, in the spirit of Atlanta, wings on the grill. Because when Towns takes the court against the Hawks, they’re barbecued chicken.

Sometimes basketball can be distilled down to its simplest truths: the team with the bigger bigs — and bigger smalls — tends to control the matchup.

Okongwu is listed at 6-foot-10 but has previously been listed at 6-foot-9. Behind him are 2023 second-round pick Mohamed Gueye and veteran center Tony Bradley, neither of whom logged more than eight minutes when the teams met in their final regular-season matchup.

Meanwhile, Towns is a legitimate seven-footer. So is Robinson, the team’s defensive anchor off the bench. Brown said after practice on Wednesday Towns has done a good job mixing up his roll-to-pop ratio after setting screens against Atlanta this season.

If the Hawks are going to guard the All-Star big man straight up, Brown wants Towns to make them pay.

“At times [in the post], they’re not necessarily coming with a hard double all the time,” he said. “And then when that happens, we really want him to be aggressive.”

The Hawks counter with size on the perimeter. Brunson is generously listed at 6-foot-2. Atlanta’s smallest starter, C.J. McCollum, stands at 6-foot-3. And when Zaccharie Risacher is on the floor, the Hawks can roll out a lineup with five players 6-foot-6 or taller.

It’s the blueprint teams lean on when trying to slow Brunson — an all-world but undersized guard. Because on an even playing field, the Knicks’ star scorer will torch like-sized defenders.

The Hawks won’t guard him straight up, even with Dyson Daniels, one of the best defenders in the league. They’ll send doubles and traps. They’ll blitz pick-and-rolls. They’ll throw size and bodies at him and hope physicality wins possessions.

And Okongwu isn’t just an undersized center collecting minutes. He’s a floor-spacing big and a versatile defender who had 12 points and eight rebounds — including four offensive boards — in 37 minutes in the April 6 matchup.

“The excuse that Atlanta is ‘small at the center spot,’ I don’t buy it,” Brown said. “Because it’s your approach to the game and the things that you do out there. So he can impact the game on both sides defensively with his athleticism, and then offensively with the way he shoots it and the way he [grabs] offensive rebounds.”

One thing Okongwu is not: He’s not Towns. And the Hawks don’t have a real answer behind him.

Which is why, even before the series begins — even while it still lives on paper — the formula is as clear as day. The Hawks have bodies for Brunson. They have schemes for Brunson. They might even slow him down a bit. But Towns — whether he says it or not — has the matchup in his favor. The series, in many ways, will hinge on whether or not the Knicks lean into it.

On whether Towns barbecues the chicken. Whether he puts the wings on the grill.

“For me, I just consistently walk into this gym and put the work in,” he said. “So I’m confident whatever I need to do for us to win.”