Star Big Man Crucial to Knicks' Title Hopes

His sudden trade from Minnesota to New York just before the start of the previous regular season gave Towns, supplanted from a miscast No. 1 option to a relied-upon veteran leader, a chance at a fresh start in the lesser conference. Towns made the All-Star team as a reward for his seamlessly slotting in behind another top-level guard in Jalen Brunson and capitalizing as one of the best stretch bigs and all-around scorers of any center out east.

Towns and Brunson got their numbers, although many fans and analysts felt that former head coach Tom Thibodeau left a good amount of Towns' value on the table. It was Brunson's team when he got there, and he was trusted to take the Knicks home in every tight spot with his multi-level bucket generation and on-bal; distribution. It won him the Clutch Player of the Year, but Towns didn't get to cook as much as he's accustomed to.

Mike Brown will be entrusted to unlock the chemistry between his pair of All-NBA talents, as well as locating Towns' ideal fit on defense.

He didn't have the strongest finish to last spring's playoffs, requiring some last-minutes starts from Mitchell Robinson to help clean up under the rim and on switches. One of the few questions that still needs answering pertains to the team's starting lineup, with the Robinson starts making Towns' life easier as a defensive forward while continuing to flourish as a stretch big, though Josh Hart's presence gives Towns more open space in the paint.

Brown's a much more creative offensive game-planner than Thibodeau was, opening the door for an optimal situation for his shiniest frontcourt weapon. The Knicks' expectations are sky-high now that their contention window's been clearly opened, and his fit with this newer, deeper iteration of the team will be paramount to how the stars fit together to elevate the rest of the roster.