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After the New York Knicks won both Games 1 and 2 of the NBA Finals in San Antonio last week, star player Karl-Anthony Towns only had one person on his mind: His late mother, Jacqueline Cruz, who died of COVID-19 in April 2020.
After Game 1, he told Shaquille O’Neal on ESPN’s Inside the NBA postgame show, “I don’t want to sound sugarcoating or anything like that. I don’t know what it was, but I just felt a calm and a peace that had to be come from the woman above. I felt really confident about today. I felt good. I felt like a kid. It was just fun out here. I felt like a kid. It was just fun out here. This is something that as a kid you always dream about. You always hope to be an NBA player, let alone to be in the NBA Finals. And, all day, it was just a weird feeling. It felt like I was a kid getting ready to play my Saturday AAU games and my Sunday AAU games. In a way, it felt like I was seeing her in the stands. It was fun, it was really fun.”
He added, “It was really comforting because Game 1 of the NBA Finals, you’re told all the pressure there’s going to be and everything is... and I don’t know… it felt like a certain presence was here that was very comforting and very loving, and I felt like I could have fun out here in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, which is the weirdest thing because you expect the pressure to be at the highest.”
Timberwolves player Karl Anthony Towns with his family before being named rookie of the year.
Star Tribune via Getty Images//Getty Images
Jacqueline and Karl-Anthony after he was named NBA Rookie of the Year in 2016.
And after Game 2, Towns again spoke of his late mother. “To be honest, to be vulnerable…when you go through something like that, I feel like other than losing a child, there’s nothing worse you could go through, and it builds you up, and it strengthens you beyond measure,” he told ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt.
Towns continued, “I'm just grateful to be in this position because I know a lot of friends in mind that are not here to see this moment. I know a lot of people I love tremendously that aren't here to give me that hug or to give me that text message. I’m doing this for them. I do this for them, I do it for my mother’s country, I do it for everybody in Dominican Republic, I do it for everyone in the city that welcomed my mother when she immigrated over. I do it for all my family in New Jersey that allowed me to be raised and allowed me to love this game of basketball and allowed me to be a kid with my mother and enjoy those times. It takes a tribe to get here and it takes a village and I’m so blessed that I’ve had the village I’ve had in my life to get to this point.”
jordyn woods and karl-anthony towns
Jordyn Woods/Instagram
Karl-Anthony and his fiancée Jordyn Woods.
Woods isn’t the only one carrying his mother with him during the NBA finals; his fiancée’s engagement ring also features Jaqueline’s birthstone. On Christmas, Towns proposed to his longtime girlfriend Jordyn Woods with a custom Bernard James engagement ring. Every part of the ring, Woods told T&C, is “so intricate and thoughtful.” Her favorite part, however, is “how intentional the inside is: There are both of my parents’ birthstones, as well as mine on one side of the band and his on the other and it is symbolic of our family becoming one.”
Jeweler Bernard James told T&C, “What’s beautiful about their love story [is how they connected over loss]; it’s something we want to commemorate. That’s definitely something KAT had had noted wanting to include. But it was something that’s such a beautiful hidden element that really means something to them specifically, commemorating both them as individuals, but also both parents on each side. Initially, I was going to include his birthstone and her birthstone, but to have a story that’s centered around the love of their family and the unfortunate loss of loved ones was really special and important to have in such a meaningful piece.”
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Emily Burack (she/her) is the Deputy Digital Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, celebrities, the royals, and a wide range of other topics. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms.