The NBA reportedly isn’t happy about this, but the league has to respect the audacity.
The New York Knicks’ front office is running circles around everyone else this summer. There’s no debating that.
We know that the Knicks created arguably the most unique trade in NBA history to get the deal done. New York had to get a bit of help from FIBA and a EuroLeague team to make sure the deal happened.
But that’s not the only unique solution the Knicks came up with to land Towns. I’d argue that it’s not even the most unique.
The Knicks were apparently in a position where the team couldn’t aggregate veteran minimum contracts to balance salaries out in a trade, according to The Athletic’s Fred Katz. But the Knicks needed to do so to avoid trading key rotational players in the deal.
So what did Leon Rose and his cap guru, Brock Aller, do to get around this problem? They paid Duane Washington Jr., DaQuan Jeffries and Charlie Brown Jr. just $1 more than the veteran minimum to make the deal work.
A. Single. Dollar. Just one. This is insane.
The Knicks have discovered a new loophole in the CBA.
Teams in their situation cannot aggregate minimums anymore. So in the sign and trades of Jeffries, Brown and Washington, they are paying each of those guys just $1 above the minimum, league sources tell @TheAthletic.
This is officially the most video game-y trade in NBA history. The Knicks literally took every penny into consideration with this one. This is hilarious. It’s a trade straight out of MyGM mode on NBA 2K. Unreal.
And you just know the league’s front office is seething about this. Katz is reporting the NBA isn’t happy about it.
I have heard from various people that the league isn’t thrilled about this — but such is the way it goes with new CBAs. The NBA tries to close up loopholes and then smart people working for teams find new ones. https://t.co/7qfQEujxRi
But, honestly, how can you be mad about this? If it were, I’d just have to respect the audacity.
I imagine this is what it’s like for parents when their kids bend the rules to the point where they don’t quite break. It’s like, sure, you told little Johnny to be home by 6 o’clock, But it’s 5:59! Technically, this is fine.
The Knicks are Johnny, and the NBA is the seething parent who is upset but also impressed because they’ve raised a master negotiator.
Way to go, Leon Rose. You broke the CBA. Thank you for doing this.
Trades are not a rarity in the NBA, but certain types of trades are. We rarely ever see three-team deals. The even more rare four-team deal is possible, but exceedingly improbable. There are usually just too many moving parts to make that happen. For it to get done, all sides have to really want it to get done.
But what I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen in the NBA is a trade between…leagues? And, technically, a trade between continents, too.
There are a lot of moving parts there, naturally, considering how many teams there are.
So, where does the international stuff come in?
(Photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty Images)
I’m glad you asked. It all stems from one player involved in the deal: Duane Washington Jr.
Typically, Washington’s inclusion in a deal like this would be fairly inconsequential. He’s included in the deal as mere salary-cap filler. The Knicks included him as a sign-and-trade piece to the Hornets to ensure that they wouldn’t need to include a key rotational piece in Miles (aka Deuce) McBride.
There was one big complication, though. Washington doesn’t play in the NBA anymore. He plays for KK Partizan in Serbia.
Wait, what? The Knicks traded a dude who CURRENTLY plays in Serbia?
YES. Exactly. That’s where this thing gets weird.
As far as the NBA is concerned, the Knicks still held Washington’s rights because he played for the team on a two-way deal last season and the league doesn’t acknowledge non-NBA contracts when considering a player’s free agency status. So he was still eligible to be part of a sign-and-trade deal.
The problem is he’s under contract and has already played in a couple of games for Partizan this year.
how tf does this work?! duane washington jr has already played twice for partizan in serbia this month lol https://t.co/OB0uzeVecT
So, basically, for the trade to work, Washington had to get out of his deal with Partizan and become a Knick for a day to eventually become a Hornet for a day and then get waived.
So…how did they make this work?
The process was pretty convoluted. Washington had to get a letter of clearance to get out of his deal with Partizan and be free to sign his new deal with the Knicks.
“So, in order to be signed-and-traded by the Knicks to the Hornets, Washington had to get a LOC from FIBA that says he’s free and clear from his contract with Partizan. Then, to re-sign with Partizan after clearing waivers from Charlotte, Washington has to get another LOC from FIBA.
All of that takes time. No matter how much the Hornets and Washington might want to set him free, there’s still a 48-hour waiver period in the NBA. And that’s if the FIBA LOC process is expedited very quickly.”
With the process underway, Washington may be away from Partizan for about a week. Smith says it’s possible he could return on October 6, but it’s more likely that he’ll be back for a EuroLeague game against Real Madrid on October 10.
Either way, Partizan is walking away from this with an undisclosed amount of cash from the NBA side in a contract buyout, and Washington will walk away with a solid $2.3 million for signing his name a couple times here and there on the inside. That’s a pretty sweet pot for them both.
Wow. This is unreal
Yet again, it’s more masterful work from Leon Rose and the Knicks front office to make sure this happens.
The team made big moves to bring in star players and, they hope, compete for championships this season. These moves were shrewd and calculated. It’s pretty unprecedented stuff.
Shake Milton, Mamadi Diakite, DaQuan Jeffries, Charlie Brown Jr., and Duane Washington will make a combined $11.1 million in 2024-25.
Incredibly, New York was able to manufacture the $11 million in salary necessary to consummate trades for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns. https://t.co/idP2NcDgay
But winning a title in the NBA is often about ideal matchups. Every team — and this is without exception — has its fatal flaw, an unavoidable kryptonite. A superstar like Jokic is transcendent, but he and his Nuggets teammates are not unbeatable.
Karl-Anthony Towns was the primary defender on Kevin Durant and Nikola Jokic in back-to-back series, credibly guarding Hall of Famers with vastly different skills while also averaging 19 points on 52/44/83 shooting.
With everyone healthy and at their best, Jokic’s Nuggets two most notable playoff losses have come at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers during the 2020 Western Conference Finals and to last year’s Timberwolves in the second round.
How both teams primarily beat Denver is no coincidence.
In 2020, the Lakers used a rotation of three bigs featuring Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard, and JaVale McGee to overwhelm Jokic. Jokic is arguably the most skilled center in the league — especially thanks to his all-time floater game. He is a one-man matchup problem who can score at will against sizable NBA defense in isolation or the post as he pleases. However, the Lakers ensured that they always had someone with size and athleticism fronting Jokic while the other forward roamed as a low-man backup in case the initial line of defense was lost.
With an exhausted Jokic still maturing as an All-NBA-caliber player, the Lakers cruised to a five-game series win. Though, Davis had his remarkable individual moments on offense, too:
The two-big lineup is not an unbeatable coverage for Jokic, per se, who has shown he can find a way to the rim and get a quality shot off anyway. But that requires the Serbian star to use a lot more of his energy. This sort of mix wears him down over time. When Jokic is tired and gassed, he’s eventually no longer working tirelessly for quality shots, he’s settling for random 3-pointers, and he’s often even failing to swallow a litany of defensive rebounds his reputation is centered around.
The Nuggets, in effect, are a shell of themselves with Jokic in this state.
The Timberwolves had a near-carbon copy of this equation to defend Jokic. They could use Towns or power forward Naz Reid to front him while four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert roamed, waiting to send over his help defense or to block the shot. To his credit, Jokic still found ways to make an impact against this defensive coverage — his masterful 40-point, 13-assist, seven-rebound effort in Game 5 of the series comes to mind — but again, that takes a lot out of him. And Towns certainly seemed like he challenged Jokic the most of all three defenders.
There’s also a reason the Timberwolves don’t usually prefer putting Gobert on Jokic in single coverage because this is what happens:
By his high standards, after having to metaphorically break his back against Towns, Gobert, and Reid all series, Jokic almost appeared ephemeral in stunning back-to-back losses in Game 6 and 7. It’s because the Timberwolves had the perfect defensive coverage to combat his skill. With all due respect to Julius Randle, he is not nearly the same kind of defender as Towns, let alone as talented.
And if the Timberwolves want to use more of Reid against Jokic while Gobert roams, well, I’ll let the screenshot below from their most recent playoff battle tell the story about how that would likely go:
With Towns out of the picture now, Minnesota got a lot worse against Denver, specifically, as a result.
None of this is to say that the Nuggets’ path through the Western Conference to another NBA championship this season has parted like the Red Sea. The West remains a daunting gauntlet, with juggernaut contenders like the Oklahoma City Thunder, Dallas Mavericks, and yes, even the Timberwolves without Towns, still standing in Denver’s way, among others.
But if you’re Denver, you likely always feel great about your chances in any playoff series the easier Jokic has it. The looser his individual matchups are, the more likely it is the Nuggets will find a way to beat you in a back-and-forth best-of-seven. I would not be shocked to learn that Denver’s front office celebrated this Towns trade just as much as anyone actually involved in the deal. As Denver aims for two titles in three years, this might have been the organization’s biggest move of the offseason, and it didn’t even have to lift a finger.
As it currently stands, no other West championship contender has proven they have the ultimate antidote to trying to beat Jokic. With Towns, the Timberwolves did. But that reality is dead and gone now.
Four-time NBA All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns is heading from the Minnesota Timberwolves to the New York Knicks in a blockbuster trade.
While the trade is not yet official, the big man has reportedly already arrived in New York. But once the deal is no longer pending and his tenure with the Knicks officially begins, there is a perfect nickname for Towns once he suits up for his new team.
Some fans think that Towns should start going by “Bodega KAT” when he plays for the Knicks. Stating the obvious: This is a tribute to how his initials “KAT” sound like the word “cat” and how New York City bodega delis often have felines living in those stores.
He was Big Purr in Minnesota. He’s absolutely going by Bodega Kat in NY.
No matter who came up with it, though, I’ve got a feeling that Bodega KAT should stick around for some time.
Especially considering his East Coast roots growing up nearby in New Jersey, this is a perfect nickname for so many reasons. Plus, it is much better than Big Purr.
This massive move will give New York an incredible starting five, but there is one small problem: The organization cannot actually discuss the terms and implications until the league processes the transaction. That usually isn’t a big deal but that comes at a very inconvenient time: Media day.
With so many reporters around the team, they all want to know about Towns. But they are only getting coy, canned answers. Here are a few of them so far:
September is supposed to be the month where nothing happens in the NBA. Almost every free agent has been signed, almost every trade has been made, and rosters are set, waiting for training camp to begin. Normally. But not this year. Last night, out …
September is supposed to be the month where nothing happens in the NBA. Almost every free agent has been signed, almost every trade has been made, and rosters are set, waiting for training camp to begin. Normally.
But not this year. Last night, out of absolutely nowhere, it was reported that the Minnesota Timberwolves and New York Knicksagreed upon a deal to send Karl-Anthony Towns to the Big Apple in exchange for Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and a future protected first-round pick.
There are whispers before their trades. Normally. But not this time. The news came to the surprise of everyone in and around the NBA, not least of which was Towns himself, whose camp was reported to be “stunned”. Towns, it must be noted, never requested a trade from Minnesota – not now, and not ever. No one outside of the very few in on the deal knew this was coming, or that anything like it was brewing, from Minnesota’s end at least. And when looking at the deal from their end, it is easy to see why this was the assumption.
In HoopsHype’s recent look at the trade assets of every NBA franchise, it was seen how the Wolves had little in their stable to facilitate deals. They had foresworn almost all of their future draft picks – mostly in the July 2022 trade with the Utah Jazz that saw them land Rudy Gobert – in the pursuit of assembling their own version of the Big Three, the three-headed foundation now considered so ubiquitous in NBA roster construction.
Additionally, as seen in our recent look at every team’s luxury tax situation, the Wolves were sporting the largest payroll in their history. With more than $208 million committed in 2024-25 alone, the team was set to have the second-highest payroll in the league, and with their large contracts extending beyond this season, the payroll was going to stay big and quickly become subject to the luxury tax at repeater rates. In tandem, between the lack of draft capital, the payroll expenditure, and the age of the star they had traded it all for, they were thought to be “all in”.
More importantly, it looked like it was working, albeit to relative standards. Fuelled by a rejuvenated Gobert – who won his fourth NBA Defensive Player of the Year award in 2023-24, his second year with the team – the Wolves won 56 regular season games, their best return in 20 years, and advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs for only the second time in franchise history. Gobert still had his fastball, Towns was entering his prime, and the third wheel – Anthony Edwards – only turned 23 over the summer. The journey was imperfect, but it was starting to work.
However, with the future mortgaged, they have gone away from the present. And it is hard to see why.
For a moment, forget everything you know about all the players involved in the deal. Instead, look at the term in purely asset terms. First, look at the financial ramifications.
It is true that the Wolves will be shifting out the substantial $220,441,984 still owed to Karl-Anthony Towns through 2028 through this deal. However, Randle and DiVincenzo combine for $95,845,200 coming back in. The only way to realize the potential salary savings is to let them walk; otherwise, they will need big new contracts, making the financial situation much closer to a push than it appears on first glance.
Secondly, in terms of the assets, the only piece of draft capital coming back is a Top 13 protected 2025 first-round pick from the Detroit Pistons. The protection diminishes until 2027, but given that the Pistons are at the foot at the NBA and not going anywhere any time soon, that pick may never convey. If it does not, Detroit’s 2027 second-round pick will be sent instead. And that makes barely an imprint on the net negative situation that Minnesota has in its draft capital.
And thirdly, look at the ages of the players involved. 28 years old going out, 29 and 27 coming back in. This is not a timeline-changer. This trade was about the present day. This trade was about this season, This trade was about the “now”.
Reductive though it may seem, the value in looking first at the trade in this detached way is simply because Towns is, indisputably, the best player in it. Arguments can be made that Randle might prove to be a better fit alongside Gobert, and that DiVincenzo – who hit the third-most three-pointers in the NBA last season behind only Stephen Curry and Luka Doncic, and who had ascended to Star Role Player status – is not a piece to be overlooked.
Arguments can also be made that the loss of Towns will in part be offset by an expanded role for Naz Reid, who has developed into an excellent modern offensive big. This is true enough; Reid is good.
But as things stand, after going all in to create a Big Three, the Wolves have stepped back to a Big Two And A Bit, without meaningfully replenishing the assets cupboard and keeping the oldest one of the three. If the trade from Minnesota’s perspective is indeed one of the “now”, then it bears a mention that that “now” will rely upon the health of a currently-injured (and often-injured) Randle, a talented player who has never had optimum deployment of said talents, except for that one anomalous year when he shot like Kevin Durant somehow. This is quite a huge question mark to trade a perennial All-Star seven-footer for.
What is indisputably true is that the Knicks are a better team than they were last week. They have been aggressive for a while, and that aggression has brought them a front four of Towns, Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby. That lineup really needed a center, particularly in the wake of the departure of Isaiah Hartenstein and the continuing injury problems of Mitchell Robinson. And they did not get just any center; they got an elite one, entering his prime years, for the cost of a flawed star they were going to play out of position anyway, a pick that may never convey, and a solid role player who nonetheless was likely to be jockeying for court time with Josh Hart. We might not have known that the Knicks were going to do this deal, but now that they have, we certainly know why they did.
The New York Knicks made another bold move to surround Jalen Bruson with top talent, trading Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a first-round pick to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns. Here’s how social media reacted to the Knicks …
The New York Knicks made another bold move to surround Jalen Bruson with top talent, trading Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a first-round pick to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns.
Here’s how social media reacted to the Knicks finally acquiring KAT:
After all of that, what does the Knicks roster look like? And what will the depth chart and starting five look like? Glad you asked. Let’s run through it real quick and see if we can play Tom Thibodeau for a sec after the KAT deal:
The Knicks starting five
Jalen Brunson
Mikal Bridges
OG Anunoby
Josh Hart
Karl-Anthony Towns
Intriguing. Hart proved he could rebound last postseason, so this isn’t as weird as it looks.
The Knicks’ depth chart
PG: Jalen Brunson, Cameron Payne, Tyler Kolek
SG: Mikal Bridges, Miles McBride, Landry Shamet, Pacome Dadiet
SF: OG Anunoby, Keita Bates-Dip, Chuma Okeke
PF: Josh Hart, Precious Achiuwa, Marcus Morris Sr.
Let’s grade the trade between the Knicks and Timberwolves.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
How about THAT for a Friday news dump in the NBA?
Shams Charania broke news that the New York Knicks were nearing a trade for Minnesota Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns, a deal that would involve a former All-Star in Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, a member of the former Villanova players on the roster.
Now: these are incomplete grades, but we’re doing them anyway because it seems like there’s a basic format in place. A third team probably needs to get involved in order for it all to go through, so we’ll revisit these. For now, let’s break down each team as it stands.
The trade, per reports
Knicks get: Karl-Anthony Towns
Timberwolves get: Donte DiVincenzo, Julius Randle and a first-round pick (via the Pistons)
Julius Randle was an All-Star for this franchise, a player who signed with them and blossomed into a great offensive player who proved he could be more than a role player.
That said, he wasn’t the right fit for the roster now. And that’s OK! He’s still going to contend with the T-Wolves with Anthony Edwards. And as for Divincenzo? He might have fought for minutes on a team that’s suddenly deep at the wing.
KAT comes in and replaces Randle’s offense, but as a better fit. He’ll open up the floor even more for the offense and, like in Minnesota, concerns about his defense will presumably be covered up once Mitch Robinson comes back healthy.
A deal you make every single time.
GRADE: A
Timberwolves grade
Towns was pretty darn good with Rudy Gobert in the middle. Took some time, but it worked. And maybe the thinking here is that you don’t take too much of an offense step back with Randle, while also opening things up for Edwards, a bona fide No. 1 superstar in the making.
KAT was thriving in his role last year by hitting 41.6 percent from three. Randle isn’t quite that good, but also remember that Randle’s contract expires after this season with a player option in 2025. So there might be flexibility as the franchise builds around Edwards.
Let’s not forget that DiVincenzo emerged as a solid two-way talent last year for the Knicks. He adds scoring, shooting and defense to the T-Wolves backcourt.
GRADE: A-
UPDATE: the Hornets are involved!
Knicks are sending salary — including DaQuan Jeffries — and draft compensation to Charlotte in three-team Karl-Anthony Towns/Julius Randle deal, sources tell me and @JonKrawczynski. https://t.co/dP4x8dTvr9
It’s a huge deal for the Knicks, who will send away former All-Star Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Knicks already went mostly all in and are now very much ALL THE WAY IN with an upgrade that fits their team better than Randle did.
And KAT? Well, he apparently heard some things, because he tweeted just three characters out:
