Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns' first love: Opening packs of sports cards
Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns interacts with a young fan at the launch of the 2025-26 Topps Basketball trading cards show at the NBA Store in New York City on Thursday. Credit: Topps
MIAMI
Karl-Anthony Towns has spent nearly half his life in the NBA. The Knicks’ big man is in his 12th season. But the NBA wasn’t his first job and maybe not his first love.
His first job was at Menlo Park Mall in New Jersey, working at a sports memorabilia shop. And his latest venture, after partnering with Topps sports cards, is an Instagram account — bigbodegacards — in which he playfully opens up packs of cards and checks whether he’s scored big or lost money on the pack.
But it’s not the money, even if the real job affords him the ability to take a loss on a pack that doesn’t contain the big money cards, that has lured him back. It’s something he loved as a child and now can renew his passion.
When I raised the subject to him, he said, “Now you want to touch my soul.
“I did [always love it],” Towns told Newsday. “That was my first job, at Spencer’s sports cards. I did it before the NBA, selling sports cards and memorabilia. Funny enough, I’ll always remember the memorabilia I had to sell was an A-Rod signed bat.
“Yeah, it’s a passion of mine since I was young . . . I wasn’t as intense into it as I am now again. I’ve always had such a love for it. It’s amazing to see the market and the hobby so alive. It’s amazing. It’s really fun. My girlfriend is into it. My nephew is into it. It makes it really fun for me to open packs and cards and allow them to live the childhood I had with it.”
He tries to post at least one opening to his Instagram account every day and has appeared at events — the opening of Tom Brady’s card shop and then a Topps event premiering the new season’s cards. It was at that event that he, Josh Hart and OG Anunoby opened a pack each on camera.
When Towns opens his pack and scores one of the most valuable cards — an autographed Cooper Flagg rookie card — the reaction is not different from maybe the 14-year-old KAT opening a pack, even if he now could easily buy the card and, even more easily, get Flagg to sign something for him.
“I do. I do and I’m the vet,” Towns said of the excitement he got. “Shout-out to Cooper Flagg, man. The NBA is in a great spot. I speak out from a fan of the game of basketball and as a vice president standpoint as vice president of the [National Basketball Players Association]. He’s a huge addition for our league and we’re excited to see him blossom.
“And now he’s a huge addition to the collection. It was cool. It’s always fun when you get one of those chase cards everyone is looking for. For me, the hobby is not even about,” he said, pausing for a moment to find the words. “It’s just about the chase. The chase is what’s fun about it.”
The dark side
If Towns’ card collecting seems like a wholesome hobby, the attention around the NBA opening days has centered around the gambling allegations against Miami’s Terry Rozier, Portland head coach and Hall of Fame player Chauncey Billups and others.
The Knicks had little to say about it, mostly exhaling a sigh of relief that they have no connection to it other than Billups spending a brief part of his playing career with the franchise.
“All that stuff is above my head,” Mike Brown said. “That’s something I don’t feel I’m privy or intelligent enough to talk about because it’s a lot of this and that that I don’t know about. I know it’s a league matter. The league has programs for the guys. I think our team does too. Me, Mike Brown, I’m not the teacher of that area.”
Said Hart, “I’m not going to talk too much about it until a lot of the other facts and stuff comes through, but I played for Chauncey when I was in Portland. Chauncey was great to me, one of my favorite people in general. He was a genuine person. So I don’t know the facts and all that, but Chauncey is a great dude and I’ll talk about it later when all the facts come out.”
Coincidentally, Hart was traded from Portland to the Knicks in February 2023 — part of the tanking plans by the Trail Blazers — just a month before the game that was targeted by the FBI in Billups’ case.
Dirty work
Brown has taken to awarding defensive player of the game honors after each game. Anunoby got it Wednesday; Jordan Clarkson got it Friday. The winner gets a construction vest, a hard hat and a Timberland work boot to pose with as the team surrounds him.
“Jordan ended up being our defensive player of the game because he sparked us defensively during that time,” Brown said. “But it could have been anybody. Tyler [Kolek] ended the game with four or five deflections, if not more. Josh, man, a monster, monster, monster. Now Josh could have easily got it as well. He guarded everybody. Not only did he guard everybody, he had six offensive rebounds, eight defensive rebounds. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen this before, 14 rebounds in 19 minutes. Just a phenomenal game doing the dirty stuff by Josh.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
