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Karl-Anthony Towns didn’t expect to make it to Barclays Center on Friday night. But he followed the wishes of his father, Karl Sr., who is recovering from a medical procedure, and dropped 26 points with 15 rebounds in a 93-92 win over the Nets. “I wasn’t going to play. My pops was adamant he wanted me to play,” said Towns, who was listed as questionable for personal reasons before tipoff. “So I said I would. So I showed up just for the game to play. I’m going to head right back out and go be with him again for the road to recovery.” Karl Sr., a former star at Monmouth University, is a mainstay at his son’s games, frequently flying commercial to follow the Knicks on road trips. Towns lost his mother, Jacqueline Cruz, to COVID-19 in 2020. Sources said Karl Sr.’s medical issue is not life-threatening.
Fox then mentioned that he got called by King Rice, his best friend and a former teammate at the University of North Carolina. As he explained, Rice, the head coach at Monmouth University, walked off the floor following the team’s game against Iona, at which point someone told him that Fox may have been involved in the helicopter crash. “He started calling,” Fox recalls. “So I’m seeing King’s number repeatedly going and going and going, and I think he’s worried about me, so I said, ‘I’m gonna talk to my best friend.’ I answered and I said, ‘Hey, man, this is crazy about Kobe,’ and he just was bawling. And I started crying, and he was like, ‘You’re alive.'”
Raptors 905 have the only female coach in the NBA Development League with the hiring of Nicki Gross on Friday. Gross, 27, spent last season as an assistant with the Iowa Energy and joins the Toronto Raptors' D-League affiliate as its player development coach. Gross played soccer at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and then ran track at Monmouth University as a graduate student. She also served as a manager for the school's men's basketball team.