Knicks kick off their Celtics chase with a Karl-Anthony Towns warning

At Karl-Anthony Towns’ previous stop, the pervasive perception was that the Minnesota roster was created to topple one team, in particular. “They’re built to beat us,” Nikola Jokic said in May, just before his Nuggets were eliminated by the Timberwolves. Now, Towns has switched conferences, and so has the Larry O’Brien trophy — transferring from Denver to Boston.That championship is the backdrop to the Knicks season opener Tuesday night in Boston, where Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Co.

will be presented their diamond-laced title rings. “Good for those guys,” Mikal Bridges said.“But I’m ready to play.

Nothing else.” Conventional wisdom suggests the path to the next NBA Finals will go through the Celtics, and the Knicks, on paper, seem to match up well because of their top-flight wing defenders running counter to Tatum, Brown and Derrick White. As Jalen Brunson said after the Knicks acquired Bridges and re-signed OG Anunoby, “We’re all chasing Boston.” But Towns said focusing on one team is too closed-minded. “For us in Minnesota, we were just building to win a championship.So for us, we can’t just be worried about one team,” Towns said.

“We got to be worried about the whole Eastern Conference.For us to accomplish what we want to do and what this city is yearning for us to do, we need to be able to be a team that not just beat Boston but find a way to beat every team in the East.

So limiting ourselves and boxing ourselves into a philosophy of beating just one team is not going to get the job done.” Towns has a point.The Timberwolves, who emphasized size with one of the NBA’s tallest lineups, eliminated the Nuggets in the second round last season but were bounced by the Mavericks in the Western Conference Final. They achieved a goal but not the goal. The Knicks, who haven’t advanced to a conference final since the Clinton administration, aren’t in a position to overlook the Sixers, Cavaliers, Pacers, Bucks, H...