There wasn’t much of a sample size last year. Only 13 games and 47 minutes during the regular season. Only 18 games and 366 minutes in the postseason.

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

And given new head coach Mike Brown’s earliest lineup hint, with Robinson starting over 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 court,” Towns said Wednesday of Robinson. “I had good expectations of what I thought of Mitch walking in, especially on the offensive end, how I can maximize his offensive game. But even he surprised me with his ability.”

A key piece of their overlap on the court involves Robinson’s health. He hasn’t played more than 59 games in each of the last three regular seasons, and in 2024-25, he only logged 13 — which forced the Knicks to balance his minutes, limit his availability on back-to-backs and, by extension, provide limited runway for the Towns experiment.

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

“It’s a job, Towns said, “but I’m blessed that he’s trusted me with it.”

Josh Hart, who missed practice Tuesday with his back injury, didn’t practice Wednesday due to an illness. Brown didn’t have any update on Hart’s status for the Knicks preseason game Thursday.

The Knicks hired Peter Patton — a former shooting coach for the Timberwolves and Mavericks, and most recently the Bulls director of player development from 2023-25 — as a 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, at the end of practice, the Knicks need to make three consecutive free throws to avoid a down-and-back sprint. At one point, Brunson had a bet for Brown: if they make all three in the first round, then Brown and the coaching staff need to run. Brown thought he was safe.

But Wednesday, that’s what happened. “I’m a man of my word,” Brown said. The staff did a down-and-back — 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 regular-season game to be able to know that that’s your home court every night, and to do it for the first time… it gives you goose bumps,” Brown said.