Knicks star proves he’s world’s biggest Assassin’s Creed fan with pregame tunnel fit

Listed at seven feet and 248 pounds, Karl-Anthony Towns is already one of the largest players in the NBA. But while there may be bigger players than him in the league, his pregame fit on Wednesday night proved that there is no bigger Assassin’s Creed fan in the world.

The open-world, historical science fiction stealth videogame franchise releases its latest edition, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, on Thursday, March 20, but while that will allow players worldwide to step into feudal Japan to play as either a samurai (Yasuke) or shinobi (Naoe) thanks to its dual playable protagonists, Towns has already gotten to live out the dream for longtime fans of the series, and he didn’t even have to step into The Animus to do it.

What dream, you ask? Well, before his New York Knicks took on the San Antonio Spurs, Towns walked into the matchup in a modernized version of the iconic Assassin robes that publisher Ubisoft custom-designed for his seven-foot frame.

Photo by Logan Riely/NBAE via Getty Images

If the Assassins a) we real and b) still around today, it’s not hard to imagine this being a fit they would wear, especially given many of the series’ playable characters’ addiction to putting their secret society logo on some version of their disguises. And, despite movies teaching us that a hood and sunglasses make someone unrecognizable, we can tell that is KAT, mostly because it’s hard to blend in as a seven-footer, a height that drastically limits how many people it could possibly be in disguise.

Prior to this, the only fan of the series we knew of who had an argument as being bigger than Towns was Jaren Jackson Jr., who was among the NBA players to join Towns at Ubisoft’s headquarters for an early trial of the game during NBA All-Star Weekend:

Photo by Cassidy Sparrow/Getty Images for Ubisoft

However, Jackson is listed as “just” 6’10 and 242 pounds, so while he may be a more imposing rim protector, between his listed size and lack of Assassin robes for a pregame tunnel fit, we have to give the edge to Towns here. And given that the NBA is made up of most of the largest humans in the world, it’s hard to imagine there is a larger Assassin’s Creed fan than Towns. Or at least not one who loves the game as much.

Karl-Anthony Towns has been a fan of Assassin’s Creed since the first game

Towns told ESPN that he has played the series’ since the first entry in 2007 — meaning he was already playing M-rated games at 12 — and really got into the series when it released its first multiplayer entry, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, with some of his Kentucky teammates:

“Brotherhood solidified my love and passion for Assassin’s Creed,” Towns told ESPN. “I was in college and able to play with my teammates — Willie Cauley-Stein and Derek Willis — for the first time and experience the world with my teammates.”

(For what it’s worth, Cauley-Stein was listed as eight pounds lighter than Towns is now in his last NBA season, so KAT’s world’s biggest AC fan title still appears secure)

Towns has kept playing the games during his spare time in the NBA since going No. 1 overall in the 2015 NBA Draft, including in this clip of him reacting in exactly the correct way to realizing how powerful Eivor/Odin’s kicks could be in 2022’s AC: Valhalla expansion, “Dawn of Ragnarok”:

Shadows is getting plenty of buzz already, as the game is visually beautiful and receiving plenty of positive reviews, with my colleagues at The Verge — accurately, in this sports blogger who had a chance to play a pre-release version of the game’s opinion — writing that “every bit of scenery is rendered with such detail that I felt transported to an era of Japan that, despite being covered to death in media, nevertheless remains endlessly fascinating.”

However, Towns actually dressing up as a a titular Assassin in the United States’ biggest media market may get some new fans to Google the series to see what he’s a fan of. And no doubt because he was emboldened by finally, officially joining the Brotherhood of Assassins, Towns scored the Knicks’ first nine points on his own to start Wednesday’s game:

Unfortunately, he and the Knicks couldn’t keep that momentum, and Towns ultimately appeared set to suffer a really unlucky twist of fate in the third quarter, when he left the game with an apparent hand injury… which would have been brutal news not just because the Knicks only have 14 games left before the NBA playoffs, but also because he injured the one body part you can injure in a basketball game that might keep one from being able to play video games!

Thankfully, Towns got some healing rations and was able to return in the fourth quarter, although he couldn’t save the Knicks from a 120-105 loss. But hey, at least he avoided a hand injury so that he can slip on his hidden blade and play the full version of Shadows tonight to help unwind.