Draymond Green made a baseless accusation about Karl-Anthony Towns’ absence from Tuesday’s game against the Warriors, claiming that the Knicks star missed the contest because he didn’t want to play against Jimmy Butler.
The comment came off in particularly bad taste after Towns’ longtime girlfriend, Jordyn Woods, revealed in an Instagram story on Thursday that she had lost “one of the closest people to me yesterday after she lost her battle to breast cancer,” Sarah Holtzman, who had also been close with Towns.
Towns, before Thursday’s game against the Lakers, called his absence “one of those moments where I had to be there for my family” after rejoining the team in Los Angeles.
The superstar had been officially ruled out from Tuesday’s game for “personal reasons,” and the Knicks fell to the Warriors, 114-102, at the Garden.
However, Green made the claims about Towns’ absence during his podcast released on Wednesday —even though he admitted that he “didn’t look that deep into” the issues around Towns.
“That was a big game for us,” Green said. “And obviously, they ain’t have KAT. Some would say he didn’t play because Jimmy was in the building. I don’t know.”
“I saw KAT’s pops at the game yesterday. I got incredible love for the OG, his pops is an incredible man. But yeah, they say KAT didn’t play because Jimmy came into town. You know him and Jimmy had the infamous practice in Minnesota.”
He continued later: “I don’t know what was hurt. I didn’t look that deep into it to figure out what his injury was or nothing like that.”
Towns was back in the starting lineup against the Lakers.