Karl-Anthony Towns trade grades: Knicks and Timberwolves both win in mutually beneficial blockbuster |Max Sporty|

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

Both the Knicks and Timberwolves entered Friday with 2024-25 championship ambitions. They both leave Friday with 2024-25 championship ambitions. However, they traded away reigning All-Stars and drastically remade their rosters just days before training camp began. The closest analog to this deal historically would probably be the 2017 Kyrie Irving-Isaiah Thomas trade, but even that deal came in August. Nobody has time to be shocked. The season unofficially starts on Monday.

So what should we do about this issue? What prompted two potential playoff teams to shake up their rosters so drastically? And how did both teams in the deal? Here are our notes for Friday’s shocker.

New York Knicks: B+

The Knicks had two major problems to solve within the next year. The short-term issue was the central position. Isaiah Hartenstein left in free agency. Mitchell Robinson is injured. Tom Thibodeau teams are incredibly dependent on size. New York will have to swing a center at some point. The longer-term issue was Julius Randle’s contract. He’s a three-time All-Star who makes more sense as a floor lifter than a ceiling player. He needs the ball in his hands to be successful. His jump shot is inconsistent. So is his defense. He never quite figured out the pick dance with Jalen Brunson, though to be fair, the Knicks mostly didn’t ask him either. He was, in a sense, a remnant of a team they no longer had. He helped build the culture that Brunson inherited. But there was a pretty strong argument against his fit in a Brunson-centric team. He simply won’t have the ball in his hands enough to justify the kind of contract his accolades suggested he would receive.

The Knicks solved both of those problems in one outing. Towns can play either power or center, a rarity among modern bigs and very valuable to a Knicks team that is also quite heavily invested in Robinson. The Knicks have their short-term answer, and to get it, they’ve dismissed their long-term Randle problem. The Towns fit is much, much cleaner.

He’s not just a good shooter. He is, by almost any statistical measure, the greatest shooter to ever play the center position. Having that caliber of shooting out of a big man changes everything. The Knicks no longer have to worry about defenders ignoring Josh Hart nearly as much. Do this at your own risk: giving him unhindered access to the glass with this gap would be completely irresponsible. The difference between New York and Minnesota, however, is that the Knicks are much better suited to utilize the rest of their gifts than the Timberwolves. Towns is a stellar pick-and-roll finisher. He never really got to show it because the Timberwolves didn’t have worthy guards early in his career, and by the time Anthony Edwards became a star, Towns was playing in poorly spaced lineups next to Rudy Gobert. Jalen Brunson will love him.

Do Cities create defensive issues? Yes, but they are doable when you have the right staff. The Knicks emphatically have the right personnel. If they determine he needs to play next to a traditional edge protector, they have Robinson. In truth, though, he probably starts out as New York’s only big man. He is very good in space, taking advantage of his athleticism to clog passing lanes and suffocate ball-handlers in more aggressive defenses. Thibodeau tends to demand quite a bit from his rim protectors, but just think about the perimeter defenders on this list. How often could someone pass OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and Deuce McBride? Anunoby can even defend centers when matchups dictate it. Cities could not join a more perfect list for his specific skill.

Losing DiVincenzo spikes. McBride can no longer be a feast-or-famine reserve. He is the sixth man now, a role he more than earned a season ago. You will hear complaints about his contract. He is definitely overpaid. A four-year supermax would make most teams, and as we’ll cover soon, that’s why Minnesota had to trade him in the first place. But this is the flexibility the Jalen Brunson discount buys you. The Knicks can afford this deal because Brunson, and eventually Mikal Bridges, will subsidize it. That’s a luxury that no other team has had.

Money will be tight for the Knicks. They have lost significant depth and now there is mostly no tradable first round capital. The big moves are being made now. Either some version of this team is capable of winning it all or the Knicks won’t do it. But the sheer size of the talent upgrade here given the picks the Knicks already owed Brooklyn makes this a win. That win comes with risks attached, but they were risks the Knicks had to take given the potential reward.

Minnesota Timberwolves: B+

Nobody wanted to admit it, but Minnesota had to trade Karl-Anthony Towns. There is an argument in favor of waiting a year. The Timberwolves just came seven wins short of a championship. Typically that’s a team that runs it 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 max money when he isn’t consistently producing at a max level. Cities don’t just expect maximum money. He is locked in it for four more years. There were likely scenarios in which Minnesota tried to make such a trade next summer and couldn’t. That’s how restrictive a new CBA is. It was now or maybe never. The Timberwolves chose not to risk the “never”.

Minnesota is not New York. Edwards, Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels are all earning market rate. Naz Reid has a player option for the 2025-26 season that he will no doubt decline for a raise. Gobert might leave some 2025-26 money on the table, but only if Minnesota gives him longer-term security. The Timberwolves are a second apron team this season. That freezes their 2032 first-round pick. The last thing they want is to risk seeing it moved to the end of the first round with repeated apron penalties. Minnesota had to save money somewhere.

Maybe it wouldn’t be Cities if he was 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 13 total points. Towns shot 15-of-54 from the field and 3-of-22 on 3s in those games. You can put up with an inconsistency of players at Reid’s price. Not at most. 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 cities or the role players. Cities made more sense, especially with Reid doubling down on so much of what he brought to the table. Moving him opened more doors.

In Randle, the Timberwolves are taking a flier on a cheaper alternative. The Timberwolves paid $50 million for a $40 million player. Now they are paying $30 million for a $30 million player at the same position. The savings outweigh the talent drop even if the fit isn’t a slam dunk. Randle is the better creator of the two, and in Minnesota, that will be valuable. The Timberwolves died for someone other than Edwards or Mike Conley to create shots last season. Randle will help in that regard, especially since they bring rookies Rob Dillingham and Terrance Shannon with them. Towns firing Randle—especially on a Gobert-centric roster—will hurt. DiVincenzo will help in that regard, but he probably won’t close out games unless Randle isn’t. That’s not the worst idea depending on matchups. Good luck guarding an Edwards-Gobert ball-and-roll with DiVincenzo, Conley and McDaniels around it.

The stakes of Randle’s acquisition are low, however, as he has a player option for the 2025-26 season. At most, he is under contract for another two years. If this doesn’t work out, the Timberwolves can let him walk and regroup below the tax line. They can use his salary for a better fit via trade, and considering all the picks they currently owe San Antonio and Utah, that Pistons pick they got from the Knicks in this deal will be huge on that front.

They no longer risk being locked into a list they may not have wanted. If the Randle version works? Excellent. Re-sign him for less than it would cost to keep Towns and find other ways to save under the aprons. If it does not, and you need to pivot? You have a ready young core here in Edwards, McDaniels, Reid and Dillingham. DiVincenzo fits in with them because he fits in with anyone. If the Timberwolves ever need to get younger, they have the right to do that too.

If you believed the Timberwolves were among the favorites to win the championship this season, this was a bad trade. It’s much more likely that the Timberwolves fell into the “they’d need two or three big breaks to win the championship” group that eight or nine teams currently occupy. 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 magically solved the Nuggets. They trailed by 20 points in Game 7 of that series. The Western Conference is too deep to lock yourself into a team that may or may not be ready to make a Finals. Minnesota was willing to sacrifice some of its 2025 equity to extend its run and make it a little more versatile. It was a controversial move, but probably the right one.

Cities are not ultimately 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 has years of runway ahead of him. If sacrificing Towns is what it takes to ensure Edwards has a long-term contender around him, then it was worth it.