Karl-Anthony Towns He scored a ton of goals for the New York Knicks on Wednesday night, but his lack of singles bothered him.

towns He broke his personal record again with the Knicks, scoring 46 points on 18-of-30 shooting from the field against the Chicago Bulls. But this wasn’t enough to save New York from a terrible fate. He dropped a 124-123 decision.

With 46 points, Towns became the first Knick in team history to win two 40-point games in the first 11 of a season. This is also the NBA’s third-best score this season, behind Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 59 points on Wednesday and Paolo Banchero and Victor Wembanyama also scoring 50 points.

It meant nothing to Towns afterward.

“I don’t care about that,” Towns said bluntly. According to SNY’s Ian Begley. “If it doesn’t have a ‘W’ attached to it, it’s a bad night.”

Most of Towns’ scoring production came in the second half, and the Knicks (5-6) took a few late leads despite trailing by as many as 22 in the final stages of the third quarter. Towns shot 12-of-19 from the field in the second half, including 3-of-7 from 3-point range, but his evening was marked by a cruel irony: free throws proved costly for Towns; The line in the game the Knicks lost by one.

After the game, MSG Network cameras caught Towns still wearing the Knicks’ traditional home white jersey. Shooting free throws with assistant coach Mark Bryant in an empty Madison Square Garden.

Towns is shooting just under 84 percent from the foul line in his career, and the Knicks were at 87 percent entering Wednesday night. Wednesday’s game was the first in which he shot 50 percent from the line on at least eight attempts since April 2016, the end of his rookie season with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

“I was disappointed in my free throw shooting,” Towns said. According to Peter Botte of the New York Post. “I hope to do it all. When you look back at the game, especially when you can’t win a tough game like that, you look in the mirror at everything you could have done. A couple of those free throws, at least two or three, would put your team in a different position.”

From Towns’ perspective, the Bulls (5-7) won the game on the charity stripe; Coby White lost three awards when Josh Hart fouled him deep on what would have been a winner with just over three seconds left.

While Towns wasn’t willing to enjoy this big night, Jalen Brunson certainly was.

Knicks point guard/captain “Karl did a great job” He was praised in the video from SNY. “The way he can do it on the field makes it look effortless. That’s just who he is. It’s great to see that in our team now, but we’ve seen it for the last 10 years.”

Towns’ extra work was perhaps even more surprising considering he played the final moments of Wednesday’s game with a visible limp after coming into knee-to-knee contact with Zach LaVine. However, he figures to be back on the court Friday night when the Knicks face a metropolitan civil war against the Brooklyn Nets (7:30 p.m. ET, MSG).

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