Knicks’ Karl-Anthony Towns will likely get a chance to build on the intriguing Mitchell Robinson chemistry

Last year there wasn’t much sample size. Only 13 games and 47 minutes during the regular season. Only 18 games and 366 minutes in the postseason.

But the early returns from a Karl-Anthony Towns-Mitchell Robinson pairing were mostly promising for the Knicks, with Towns — in the midst of the worst defensive season since 2020-21 in terms of defensive rating (114.7) — able to transition to the power forward. Towns also learned to play alongside someone like Robinson in Minnesota, with Rudy Gobert, he said.

And given new head coach Mike Brown’s first lineup hint, with Robinson taking over for Josh Hart in the preseason opener last week, they’ll likely have a chance to build on that early cohesion once the regular season arrives.

“He’s very gifted with his feet, just the way he can maneuver around the field,” Towns said of Robinson on Wednesday. “I had high expectations of what I thought about Mitch coming in, especially on the offensive side, how I can maximize his offensive game. But even he surprised me with his ability.”

A major part of their overlap on the field concerns Robinson’s health. He hasn’t played more than 59 games in each of the last three regular seasons, logging just 13 in 2024-25 — forcing the Knicks to balance his minutes, limit his availability on back-to-backs and, by extension, provide a limited starting job for the Towns experiment.

They posted a defensive rating of 118.8 and a strong offensive rating of 128.0 during the regular season. Then, with the extended postseason minutes, those numbers were 109.6 and 105.2, respectively. And it could give Towns a touch of familiarity as he adjusts to Brown’s new offense, where his job is the toughest of anyone — along with Guerschon Yabusele — on the Knicks roster, Brown said Tuesday. They must learn all five spots, with the four spots in Brown’s system being interchangeable with any position one through four.

“It’s a job,” Towns said, “but I’m blessed that he entrusted me with this task.”

Josh Hart, who missed practice on Tuesday due to his back injury, did not practice on Wednesday due to illness. Brown had no update Thursday on Hart’s status for the Knicks’ preseason game.

The Knicks hired Peter Patton — a former shooting coach for the Timberwolves and Mavericks, and most recently the Bulls director of player development from 2023-2025 — as shooting coach, according to The Athletic. Towns overlapped with him in Minnesota for the first two years of his career.

Brown has implemented a challenge in practices where the Knicks must make three consecutive free throws at the end of practice to avoid a sprint backwards. At one point, Brunson had placed a bet on Brown: If all three make it in the first round, Brown and the coaching staff will have to run. Brown thought he was safe.

But that happened on Wednesday. “I’m a man of my word,” Brown said. The staff did it up and down, with Robinson telling them when to go.

Brown will coach his first game at the Garden on Thursday, with the Knicks hosting the Timberwolves. “MSG is such an iconic venue, you know, and whether it’s a preseason game or a regular season game, to know that this is your home court every night, and to do it for the first time… it gives you goosebumps,” Brown said.