Karl-Anthony Towns is officially out of the closet as a former Linsanity superfan.
With the Knicks one round away from their first NBA championship in over 50 years, Towns took a moment this week to credit the guy who turned him into a New York basketball fan in the first place. Jeremy Lin.
“I want to give a shoutout to Jeremy Lin,” Towns said during a press conference. “Because he really made me a Knicks fan and had me at Modell’s, going crazy trying to find his jersey. I have so much love for Jeremy Lin. He’s one of my favorite Knicks of all time, one of my favorite players of all time.”
That is a 7-foot All-NBA forward going on record about his Modell’s Sporting Goods adventures from 2012. We love this version of KAT.
The timing checks out. During the Linsanity peak in February 2012, Towns was 16 years old and the star player at St. Joseph High School in Metuchen, New Jersey. Lin’s 26-game run as the Knicks’ point guard captured the entire basketball world, and a teenager from Jersey who was already a basketball obsessive would have been right in the middle of it.
The mutual admiration is real. Lin posted on Instagram earlier this postseason that he was planning to wear a KAT jersey to a Knicks playoff game. The Knicks ended up sweeping their second-round opponent before Lin could make it. The two have texted throughout the playoff run.
What makes this story land for Knicks fans is the symmetry. KAT was the awkward 2024 trade acquisition that polarized the fan base. A lot of New York supporters were not sure he was a fit. Now he is the second star on a Finals team and openly waxing nostalgic about being a teenage Knicks fan obsessing over a different undersized cult hero.
Lin’s career obviously did not end the way anyone hoped. The Knicks let him walk to Houston in 2012. He bounced through nine teams over the next decade. He has been playing in Asia for years now. Linsanity remains one of the most concentrated bursts of basketball joy in recent memory, but it never built into anything sustainable.
Towns has a chance to give Lin and every other Knicks fan something Linsanity never could. A championship.
The Knicks face the Spurs in the Finals starting Wednesday. Game 1 is in San Antonio. New York comes in on an 11-game playoff winning streak after sweeping through the Eastern Conference. They have not been to the Finals since 1999. They have not won a title since 1973.
If KAT comes through and the Knicks lift the trophy, the Jeremy Lin connection becomes one of those stories that gets told for years. The kid in Metuchen who was hunting for a Lin jersey at Modell’s grew up to be the guy who finally brought a championship back to Madison Square Garden. That is the kind of arc that makes sports worth watching.
For now, Towns is just happy to give Lin his flowers. The rest of the city is waiting to give Towns his.
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.
