Karl-Anthony Towns said the New York Knicks have no choice but to sharpen their execution after dropping Game 3 of the NBA Finals, pointing to slow starts, fourth-quarter issues and a lapse in the details that had carried them through most of the postseason.
Towns, who has not scored in the fourth quarter during the series and has taken just six shots in that period, pointed to structure and execution as the key factors behind the trend.
“I think it’s a combination. And you know, we have a game plan. We want to execute it. So, just trying to execute our game plan, especially when we get in the fourth, is vital,” Towns said when asked about his late-game usage.
The Knicks have now fallen into early deficits in all three Finals games, and Towns said the pattern has to change. “We’ll have to figure it out because like you said, in every game we played here in the finals, we put ourselves in a position where we have to start fighting immediately,” he said. “Spurs have done a great job starting in the game, dictating the pace and dictating how the game’s going.”
Towns said New York cannot keep leaning on late comebacks. “Every time, you know, we find a way to get back into the game, but we can’t trust that results going to happen every single time,” he said. “We have to try to be the first ones to throw the first punch.”
The Spurs have also forced the Knicks away from their usual flow, and Towns tied that to the need for cleaner offense. “We got to pick up the ball movement for sure. We have to,” he said. “We have what, 13 games in a row, 50 days of film to show what it looks like when we’re at our best.”
Towns said that film should point the Knicks back toward the identity that fueled their run to the Finals. “We’ve played defense at a high level,” he said, but added that in Game 3, “the details of the game, the details that made us special, we were too relaxed in them and we didn’t execute them at the level that you guys are used to seeing.”
That message carried over to his view of the one-possession losses in the series. “At the end of the day you got to find a way to win that one possession,” Towns said. “You got to win that game.”
Towns also addressed the different matchups he has seen against San Antonio’s switching defense. “Whatever the defense presents itself to me, I just want to solve that puzzle,” he said, adding that experience matters when opponents throw multiple defenders at him. “My whole career, I’ve seen a bunch of cross matching.”
He closed by stressing the need to return to the Knicks’ own fundamentals. “We have to get back to the details and our fundamentals that’s made us special,” Towns said. “We have to get back to what’s made us special, that ball movement, you know, and getting the ball zipping around the court.”
Game 4 will test whether New York can turn that message into a cleaner start and regain control of the series after the Spurs’ 115-111 win in Game 3.
