Karl-Anthony Towns bland nature is a perfect Knicks fit

CHARLESTON, S.C.— It’s on days like these when it’s easy to reminisce about the way sports was once, and about the characters that used to occupy its spotlight.

Karl-Anthony Towns is as accomplished an acquisition as the Knicks have made in years.He is a four-time All-Star.He is a two-time All-NBA selection.

He’s been rookie of the year.You probably have to go back to Carmelo Anthony — four All-Star nods, three all-NBAs in Denver — to find someone in their prime with a sparklier résumé on the day he landed as a Knick.Once upon a time, Reggie Jackson arrived similarly credentialed, and on the first day he officially spoke as a Yankee, he was mostly bland during his opening remarks inside the Versailles Terrace Room of the Americana Hotel.He did the press-conference-ish things you always do at formal gatherings: donned the hat for the first time, put on a jersey (No.

42 that day, later 44), smiled endlessly for the cameras.He did say of George Steinbrenner “he hustled me, man,” but that was as far as he drifted from his prepared remarks.It was later, before a smaller group of writers, that Reggie dropped the first of dozens of Reggie-isms he would distribute across five years as a Yankee:“I didn’t come to New York to be a star,” Jackson said.

“I brought my star with me.”Towns brings his star to New York, be certain of that.If he’s sometimes been a frustrating player to watch and a frustrating player to coach, it’s only because his talents are such that he’s graded on a curve that applies to only a dozen or so other players in the league.

He didn’t come here — a Jersey kid coming home — to be a star.He already is.And the thing that gives you hope this might be a homecoming that works out in the end is this: It wouldn’t ever have occurred to Towns to drop a Reggie-ism, even if he hadn’t been efficiently coached by the Knicks PR staff.

By all accounts, just about all KAT-isms on their own are regularly polite, milquetoast...