The Knicks will potentially be without their star center, Karl-Anthony Towns, for their upcoming five-game west-coast road trip, which begins Thursday night in Los Angeles against the Lakers.
The 29-year-old big man missed Tuesday night’s loss to the Golden State Warriors at Madison Square Garden for what head coach Tom Thibodeau disclosed as “personal reasons.” Neither Towns nor the Knicks have revealed the specifics of those reasons, and this newspaper will not speculate as to what those reasons could be, either.
“He needs some time,” Thibodeau said on Tuesday. “And when he’s ready to come back, he’ll come back.”
While such a predicament makes basketball trivial, the Knicks have been stuck playing .500 ball since returning from the All-Star break, which included losses to the top two seeds in the East, the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers, before Tuesday’s loss to Golden State.
Mitchell Robinson, who has just three games under his belt since returning from ankle surgery in May, got his first start of the season on Tuesday night with Towns out. In a season-high 15 minutes, he posted seven points with five rebounds, but he was a minus-10, which is an uncharacteristic stat for New York’s defensive stalwart.
“For me, I have to be more talkative,” Robinson said. “I didn’t communicate with the guys as much as I should have. I could be better defensively. I let a guy get behind me too many times, which is something I don’t let happen often.”
Nights like that will happen, considering the rust that comes with not playing for 10 months. Thibodeau simply labeled it “a work in progress.”
The Knicks have few other options than to start Robinson and incrementally increase his minutes. He played fewer than 14 minutes in each of his first two games.
Precious Achiuwa is the only other center on the Knicks’ roster, and he was on the verge of fading into irrelevance upon Robinson’s return. He played just four minutes on Feb. 28 against the Memphis Grizzlies. Then he received his first DNP of the season on Sunday against the Miami Heat — a clear indication that Thibodeau was ready to roll with Towns and Robinson at the 5 for the remainder of the season.
No Towns meant a 30-minute night for Achiuwa on Tuesday, where he scored eight points with 15 rebounds (four offensive).
The 25-year-old has been productive when called upon in a pinch. In the 10 games he has played 30 or more minutes, he is averaging 10.4 points with 8.6 rebounds per game.
His time will go down even in this stop-gap duo with Towns out and Robinson’s minutes increasing, but they will face as tough a test as ever on Thursday when they face the West’s No. 2 seed with LeBron James, Luka Doncic and the Lakers.
