Karl-Anthony Towns Trade Notes: Knicks and Timberwolves both win in a mutually beneficial blockbuster

The Karl Anthony Towns trade between the New York Knicks and the Minnesota Timberwolves is a rarity even in the NBA. This league is certainly no stranger to surprise blockbuster transactions, but surprise blockbuster transactions the weekend before the start of training camp involving two championship contenders hamstrung by a new collective bargaining agreement designed in part to prevent deals like this? Yes, that's new.

Both the Knicks and Timberwolves entered Friday with 2024-25 championship aspirations. Both leave Friday with ambitions of the 2024-25 championship. Yet they traded reigning All-Stars and drastically reshaped their roster just days before training camp began. Historically, the closest thing to this deal would probably be the Kyrie Irving-Isaiah Thomas trade in 2017, but even that deal came together in August. Nobody has time to be shocked. The season unofficially begins on Monday.

So what should we make of this matter? What motivated two potential Finals teams to make such drastic changes to their rosters? And how did both teams fare on the deal? Here are our scores for Friday's shocker.

New York Knicks: B+

The Knicks had two big problems to solve next year. The short-term problem was the middle position. Isaiah Hartenstein left in free agency. Mitchell Robinson is injured. Tom Thibodeau teams are incredibly reliant on their size. At some point New York had to risk a center attack. The longer-term issue was Julius Randle's contract. He's a three-time All-Star, which makes more sense as a floor raiser than a ceiling raiser. He needs the ball in his hands to be successful. His jump shot is inconsistent. The same goes for his defense. He never quite figured out the pick-and-roll dance with Jalen Brunson, although to be fair, the Knicks largely didn't ask him either. In a sense, he was a relic of a team they no longer had. He helped build the culture Brunson inherited. But there was a pretty strong argument against his fit on a Brunson-centric team. He simply didn't have the ball in his hands enough to warrant the contract his accolades suggested.

The Knicks solved both of these problems in one fell swoop. Towns can play either power forward or center, a rarity among modern bigs and very valuable for a Knicks team that is also investing quite heavily in Robinson. The Knicks have their short-term answer, and to get it they avoided their long-term Randle problem. The Towns fit is much, much cleaner.

He's not just a good shooter. By almost every statistical measure, he is the best shooter to ever play the center position. The caliber of shooting out of a big man changes everything. The Knicks no longer have to worry as much about defensemen ignoring Josh Hart. Do this at your own risk: giving him unhindered access to the glass at this distance would be downright irresponsible. The difference between New York and Minnesota, however, is that the Knicks are far better suited to utilize the rest of his talents than the Timberwolves. Towns is an excellent pick-and-roll finisher. He never really got to show it because the Timberwolves didn't have any worthwhile guards early in his career, and when Anthony Edwards became a star, Towns played in poorly spaced lineups alongside Rudy Gobert. Jalen Brunson will love him.

Will Towns create defensive problems? Yes, but they are doable if you have the right staff. The Knicks emphatically have the right personnel. If they determine he needs to play alongside a traditional rim protector, they have Robinson. Truth be told, though, he's probably New York's only big man. He is very good in space and uses his athleticism to clog up passing lanes and suffocate ballplayers in more aggressive pick-and-roll defenses. Thibodeau typically demands a lot from his fullbacks, but just think about the fullbacks on this roster. How many times could someone get past OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and Deuce McBride? Anunoby can even defend center when matches require it. Towns couldn't join a more perfect roster for his specific skill set.

The loss of DiVincenzo hurts. McBride can no longer be a feast-or-famine reserve. He's now the sixth man, a role he more than earned a season ago. You'll hear complaints about his contract. He's definitely overpaid. A four-year super-max would make most teams uneasy, and as we'll discuss in a moment, that's the reason Minnesota had to trade him in the first place. But that's the flexibility that Jalen Brunson's discount gives you. The Knicks can afford this deal because Brunson and eventually Mikal Bridges will subsidize it. That's a luxury no other team had.

Money is getting tight for the Knicks. They have lost importance and now largely no longer have any tradeable first-round capital. The big steps have now been completed. Either some version of this team is capable of winning it all, or the Knicks won't. But the sheer magnitude of the talent upgrade given the picks the Knicks already owe to Brooklyn makes this a win. This win comes with risks, but those are the risks the Knicks had to take given the potential reward.

Minnesota Timberwolves: B+

No one wanted to admit it, but Minnesota had to trade Karl-Anthony Towns. There is an argument for waiting a year. The Timberwolves were just seven wins short of the championship. Typically, this is a team that fights back. But Minnesota saw what happened when New Orleans tried to trade Brandon Ingram this summer. It's never been harder to trade a player who expects maximum money if he doesn't consistently produce at a maximum level. Towns doesn't just expect maximum money. He is locked up there for another four years. There were plausible scenarios in which Minnesota tried to make such a trade the next summer but failed. That’s how restrictive the new CBA is. It was now or possibly never. The Timberwolves decided not to risk the “never.”

Minnesota is not New York. Edwards, Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels are all earning market rates. Naz Reid has a player option for the 2025/26 season, which he will undoubtedly decline in exchange for a pay rise. Gobert could leave some money on the table for 2025-26, but only if Minnesota gives him more long-term security. The Timberwolves are a secondary frontcourt team this season. That freezes their 2032 first-round pick. The last thing they want to do is risk repeating lead-up penalties leading to the end of the first round. Minnesota had to save money somewhere.

Maybe this place wouldn't have been Towns if it had been a little more reliable. But he had more playoff games under 20 points (nine) than over (seven). The Timberwolves lost the first three games of the Western Conference Finals by a total of 13 points. Towns shot 15 of 54 from the field and 3 of 22 on three-pointers in those games. They can endure disagreements from players at Reid's price range. Not at the maximum. Gobert is too fundamental to Minnesota's defensive identity to move. Edwards is the face of the franchise and by far the team's best offensive player. In the end, it was either Towns or the role players. Cities made more sense, especially because Reid copied so much of what he brought to the table. Moving him opened more doors.

In Randle, the Timberwolves are resorting to a cheaper alternative. The Timberwolves paid $50 million for a $40 million player. Now they're paying $30 million for a $30 million player at the same position. The savings outweigh the talent shortage, even if the fit isn't a slam dunk. Randle is the better creator between the two, and that will be valuable in Minnesota. The Timberwolves longed for someone other than Edwards or Mike Conley to take shots last season. Randle will help in that regard, especially since they bring in freshmen Rob Dillingham and Terrance Shannon. The loss of shots from Towns to Randle — especially on a Gobert-centric roster — will hurt. DiVincenzo will help in that regard, but he probably won't finish games unless Randle isn't. Depending on the matchups, this might not be the worst idea. Good luck guarding an Edwards-Gobert pick-and-roll with DiVincenzo, Conley and McDaniels nearby.

However, the risks in acquiring Randle are low as he has a player option for the 2025-26 season. He has a maximum of two years left on his contract. If that doesn't work, the Timberwolves can let him walk and regroup below the tax line. They can use his salary space for a better fit through trade, and given all the picks they currently owe to San Antonio and Utah, the Pistons' pick they received from the Knicks in this deal will be huge in that regard .

They no longer run the risk of being tied to a squad they might not have wanted. Does the Randle version work? Great. Re-sign him for less money than it would have cost to keep Towns and find other ways to save below the aprons. What if this isn't the case and you need to pivot? They have a ready-made young core here in Edwards, McDaniels, Reid and Dillingham. DiVincenzo fits them because he fits everyone. If the Timberwolves need to get younger at some point, they are free to do so.

If you thought the Timberwolves were among the favorites to win the championship this season, this was a bad trade. It's far more likely that the Timberwolves fall into the “they'd need two or three big breaks to win the championship” bracket, which currently has eight or nine teams. They had no answer for Luka Doncic in the Western Conference finals. Doncic isn't going anywhere. Oklahoma City has improved dramatically since last spring. Beating Denver doesn't mean they've magically solved the Nuggets. In Game 7 of that series, they were down 20 points. The Western Conference is too deep to settle on one team that may or may not be ready to get to the Finals. Minnesota willingly sacrificed some of its 2025 equity to extend its run and add some versatility. It was a controversial move, but probably the right one.

Ultimately, cities are not what matters here. He was the third best player on last year's team. But Edwards has a chance to be the best player in the world, and he still has years ahead of him. If it took sacrificing Towns to ensure Edwards had a long-term competitor around him, then it was worth it.