There are 30 teams in the NBA. There is only one that can carry the title of “Reigning NBA Champion,” and unless you’ve been ensconced in the Sky Cave Retreats near Ashland, Ore., since June 13, participating in an extended version of Aaron Rodgers’ Isolation Darkness Retreat, you know who that team is: the New York Knickerbockers. 

There are 29 others, then, who carefully monitor the mojo of the one reigning champ, looking for any fissures, for any signs of weakness, for any opening through which to pounce and make life at the top as miserable as life at the top can be. 

Maybe this too will pass in the case of Karl-Anthony Towns and the Knicks and the $77 million that separate them presently, an issue that KAT seemed eager to talk about on media day last Monday, a topic for which he celebrated the one-week anniversary this Monday when asked if he hoped the sides could resolve the matter of his contract extension before the Knicks open the season Oct. 20. 

“Simply put, I want to do something to keep the team together and can work with the Knicks and also values me,” Towns said a few hours before the Knicks played their exhibition opener in Philadelphia against the 76ers, the same team against whom they’ll open the season in two weeks at Madison Square Garden. “And none of those things are close to happening.”