One of the most underrated little things in sports is when athletes show love to the other teams from their city. There are countless examples, like Tyrese Haliburton showing up to Indiana Fever games, Shohei Ohtani turning up to watch the L.A. Rams play, and Matthew Tkachuk of the Florida Panthers showing up to College Gameday to support Miami Hurricanes football.
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This never fails to get the home crowd hyped up, and it strengthens the bond between a player and a place. This is the year 2025 though, and more than ever before, athletes in most sports are changing teams multiple times throughout their careers, whether through the transfer portal, free agency or trades.
Take Karl-Anthony Towns as an example. The Knicks big man played his college ball in Kentucky, then was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves. He spent nine years in the Land of 1,000 Lakes, so it might come off as a bit disingenuous if he showed up to Vikings games for years, then tried to play it off like he was rooting for the Jets or Giants.
Towns is sticking with the team he rooted for as a kid instead, the Philadelphia Eagles. Last night on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, he explained how that came to be.
“Watching Terrell Owens, who was one of my favorite players ever growing up, and watching him play for the Eagles with Donovan McNabb, Brian Westbrook, Mr. Dawkins,” Towns said.
He continued, “I was at that age where I’m watching them play, they went to the Super Bowl that year, ended up losing, but we made up for it later. Man, what an amazing team, what an amazing childhood they gave me.”
Those Eagles teams were a lot of fun to watch, though they never quite got over the hump by winning the Super Bowl with that group. The best part of KAT’s answer is definitely how he called Brian Dawkins “Mr. Dawkins,” showing proper respect to the man who was one of the most feared hitters in the NFL.
Fallon brought up the time that Towns sat out a game this past season against the 76ers and had to cheer his Knicks on from the bench. The street clothes he chose to wear, in the Wells Fargo Center in Philly, were not exactly catering to his fans back home, as he had on a vintage-looking Eagles shirt.
Fallon found it odd that in the second half, Towns had changed, and was in a Knicks shirt instead. The former Saturday Night Live cast member said, “It went everywhere on Twitter, the internet doesn’t lose, they said, ‘Oh, he got yelled at by the New York Knicks,’ they said, ‘How dare you, you take that jersey off.'”
Towns laughed as he revealed the real reason he had swapped shirts. “What actually happened is, and I’m glad we could clear this up now,” he said, “First half’s going, team’s playing well, it’s a tight game. Screaming for my teammates obviously, I go back at halftime … pit stains. I can’t have pit stains on ESPN. I’m not gonna allow that.”
Towns said that he had an Eagles jacket on the team bus, but he didn’t want to put any more on the plate of the overworked ball boys by asking them to go get it, so he grabbed a Knicks shirt that he had in the locker room instead.
Image is everything, especially when you represent the Knicks, so we may never know the truth. Still, it made for a fun moment with Fallon, and though Towns admitted that he should have realized how the internet would latch onto his change of clothes, he still said, “Definitely always gonna support my Eagles anywhere I go.”
