Karl-Anthony Towns felt the comforting presence of his late mother, Jacqueline Cruz, while he and the Knicks took down the Spurs in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday (June 3).
Speaking with Shaquille O’Neal and the rest of the Inside the NBA team after the game, which ended with a final score of 105-95 in the Knicks’ favor, Towns, who made his NBA Finals debut on Wednesday, attributed the sense of “peace” he felt while on the court to the sustaining spirit of his mother.
“To be honest with y’all, I don't wanna sound sugarcoating or anything like that, but Shaq, you would know what I'm saying,” Towns said, as seen below. “I don't know what it was, but I just felt a calm and a peace that had to be coming from the woman above. So, I felt really confident about today. I felt good. I felt like a kid. It felt like it was just fun out here. This is something that, as a kid, you always dream about.”
Towns’s mother died in 2020 due to complications from COVID-19. In a statement shared at the time by the Minnesota Timberwolves, whom KAT played for until 2024, Jacqueline was remembered as “many things to many people,” including “a wife, mother, daughter, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend.”
On Wednesday, per Towns, there was “a weird feeling” all day.
“It felt like I was a kid getting ready to go play my Saturday AAU games and Sunday AAU games,” he said. “In a way, it felt like I was seeing her in the stands, and it was just, it was fun. It was really fun, and it was really comforting, because, you know, Game 1 of the NBA Finals, you’re told how the pressure is gonna be. … It felt like a certain presence was here that was very comforting and very loving and I felt like I could have fun out here in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.”
The Knicks and the Spurs will next face off on the court on Friday (June 5), again at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio.
