Karl-Anthony Towns saw the trap and walked right around it.
Asked twice on Sunday about Donald Trump attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks star refused to take the bait. He never mentioned Trump by name. He pivoted to talking about Knicks fans, about hope returning to the city, and about chasing a title that New York has waited more than five decades for.
“We’ve got to be desperate for the fans, who have earned the right and deserve the right to see Finals basketball played at Madison Square Garden,” Towns said. “Give them something to cheer for, something to get loud for, and something to believe in. I’ve talked about hope. Hope has been brought back to the city, we’ve revitalized that word. But the word success hasn’t been seen in this city for a long time, so we have to continue to fight to bring that word back to fruition.”
That is how you handle a question you didn’t want.
Trump’s attendance was a historic moment. He is the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game. Whether you celebrate that or hate it, it was guaranteed to dominate the storyline going into Game 3, and athletes were going to be peppered with it whether they wanted to be or not.
Towns made a smart choice. He is a player who has been around long enough to know that taking a political side, in either direction, only helps the people who want to make basketball about politics. By staying on message and pointing the spotlight back at the Knicks faithful, he avoided becoming a clip in someone else’s culture war.
Knicks fans loved it. The reaction online was overwhelmingly positive, with fans praising Towns for refusing to let the moment get hijacked. In a season where every athlete is asked to be a political pundit, the smart ones learn to stay locked in on basketball.
Towns is also playing the best basketball of his life right now. He has been the Knicks’ anchor in this Finals run, putting up huge double-doubles and grabbing rebounds in traffic against the bigger Spurs front line. His focus is where it needs to be.
The Spurs won Game 3 anyway, 115-111, but that doesn’t take anything away from how Towns handled the buildup. He looked like a veteran, not a rookie. He looked like a star.
Sometimes the most powerful thing an athlete can do is not answer the question. Towns understood that perfectly.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
