Exactly a year to the day since ex-Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard was sent out to Milwaukee in a three-team deal involving multiple star pieces – news of a deal of similar stature broke late on Friday night.
The Athletic’s Shams Charania first reported that the Minnesota Timberwolves were sending out franchise cornerstone Karl-Anthony Towns in exchange for Knicks ‘big-man’ Julius Randle, two-way guard Donte DiVincenzo and a 2025 first-round pick.
Towns, a four-time All Star, leaves Minnesota after spending the first nine seasons of his NBA career with the organization. The 2015 number-one overall pick leaves the Timberwolves as the franchise’s all time leading scorer in three-point field goals made, including a victory during All Star Weekend in the 2022 three-point contest. The Timberwolves had just broken through in the 2024 post-season, winning their first playoff series since their 2004 conference finals run led by MVP Kevin Garnett.
Randle, a three-time All Star in his own regard, departs the Big Apple after a rollercoaster five seasons at Madison Square Garden. A blend of previous playoff shortcomings and fan contretemps, as well as a shoulder injury that ended his 2023/24 campaign prematurely and kept him sidelined during the Knicks’ playoff run, had all culminated in leaving Randle as somewhat of an odd-man-out in the newest iteration of Knicks basketball. Nevertheless, his years as a Knick were without question the best of his career – highlighted by his selection for the All-NBA Second Team at the end of the 2020/21 season.
DiVincenzo’s move to Minnesota marks the end of the short-lived “Nova Knicks,” the term that caught fire in NYC after the earlier acquisition of Mikal Bridges had created the prospect of four ex-Villanova players sharing the floor at the Garden this season.
As for what it means for both teams – it’s a step toward contention on two different timelines.
For the Timberwolves, Towns’ $220,441,984 total cap hit over the next four seasons was a price high enough that it would have quickly restricted their ability to resign other key pieces as they hit the open market in the coming years. Naz Reid and Nickeil Alexander-Walker are among the team’s key players who could find themselves on new teams as soon as next summer. Getting off of Towns’ contract makes it more viable for Minnesota to keep these key pieces on new contracts for the longer term, ideally without becoming hard capped at the second apron of the NBA’s salary cap.
Losing Towns will hurt, both on and off the floor in a community where he’s become a beloved figure, but will eventually extend the theoretical championship window of a squad now officially in the hands of their phenom Anthony Edwards. Randle and DiVincenzo fit the billing for one of the league’s best defenses last season and will also keep the team competitive in the here and now.
Former Rockets general manager, Daryl Morey, said in 2017 that beating the defending-champion, Golden State Warriors, was, “the only thing we think about.” For the Knicks, this trade echoes that same sentiment in regard to their new aim to defeat the now champions – Boston Celtics. Acquiring Towns – a stretch big who spaces the floor as well as any 7-footer in the game – follows the Celtics model with Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford that helped win them the 2024 NBA championship. That Boston outfit that won 64 regular season games before cruising through the postseason in 2023/24 enter the new campaign largely unchanged as favourites to retain their crown, but adding Towns to the New York mix certainly shortens the odds of seeing a different Eastern conference representative in next spring’s NBA Finals.
