The Karl-Anthony Towns blockbuster involving the Knicks, Timberwolves, and Hornets is now official, according to press releases from each of the three teams involved in the deal.
Word first broke last Friday night that an agreement had been reached, with more details reported on Tuesday. The full terms of the trade are as follows:
- Knicks acquire Towns and the draft rights to James Nnaji.
- Timberwolves acquire Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop, and the Pistons’ 2025 first-round pick (top-13 protected; from Knicks).
- Hornets acquire DaQuan Jeffries (sign-and-trade), Charlie Brown Jr. (sign-and-trade), Duane Washington (sign-and-trade), either the Nuggets’ or Sixers’ 2025 second-round pick (whichever is least favorable; from Timberwolves), the Warriors’ 2026 second-round pick (from Knicks), the Knicks’ 2031 second-round pick, and cash ($7.2MM; from Knicks).
“We are beyond excited to welcome Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks family,” Knicks president of basketball operations Leon Rose said in a statement. “Karl-Anthony brings a skillset that is unique to the game of basketball. He possesses a blend of playmaking, shooting, rebounding and defending that in combination with his size allows him to compete at a level that is rare in this league. Karl-Anthony has demonstrated throughout his career to be a high caliber player and person on and off the court who will complement the type of team and culture we continue to build in New York.”
Minnesota waived camp invitee Jaedon LeDee in order to accommodate the one-for-three swap, while Charlotte cut guards Marcus Garrett and guard Caleb McConnell to make room on its roster for the three incoming players.
Both the Wolves and Hornets are now at their 21-man preseason limits, while the Knicks have five open spots on their 21-man squad. They’ll reportedly fill one of those spots by re-signing Chuma Okeke.
Our original report on the trade includes more details on the on-court implications of the move for the Knicks and Timberwolves. We also discussed how it will affect New York’s ability to fill out the rest of its regular season roster.
Here are a few more additional notes on the transaction:
- Randle received his full 15% trade bonus as part of the transaction, confirms ESPN’s Bobby Marks (via Twitter). That bumps the forward’s cap hit for 2024/25 from $28,939,680 to $33,073,920. The cap charge for Randle’s ’25/26 player option ($30,935,520) remains unchanged, since the trade bonus doesn’t affect option years.
- Towns also had a trade kicker in his contract, but it’s voided because he’s already earning his maximum salary, Marks adds (via Twitter).
- The three players the Knicks signed-and-traded to the Hornets will each earn exactly $1 more than their respective minimum salaries, per Marks. That works out to $2,425,404 for Jeffries, $2,237,692 for Brown, and $2,162,607 for Washington. Teams aren’t permitted to aggregate multiple minimum-salary contracts for matching purposes in offseason trades, and since Bates-Diop is on a minimum deal, Jeffries, Brown, and Washington couldn’t be. Fred Katz of The Athletic (Twitter link) has heard that the NBA “isn’t thrilled” about the way in which the Knicks circumvented that rule, but it’s technically legal.
- The Hornets used their $7,983,000 room exception to accommodate those three incoming salaries, becoming the first team to take advantage of the new rule allowing clubs to use their non-taxpayer mid-level exception, room exception, or bi-annual exception to acquire a player via trade. Charlotte now has just $1,157,297 left on that exception.
- The Timberwolves will create a $4,686,880 trade exception in the deal, which they’d be allowed to use this season despite being a second-apron team. Teams operating above either tax apron are prohibited from using trade exceptions that were generated during the previous season, but can use newly created TPEs.
- Because they sent approximately $7.2MM to the Hornets in the deal, were responsible for paying Randle’s $4.13MM trade bonus, and will reportedly pay Partizan Belgrade an estimated $850K for Washington’s buyout, the Knicks are on the hook for more than $12MM in cash, separate from player salaries, as a result of the deal.
Should have kept Donte and traded McBride, Dadiet, Ariel two way contract with the draft rights to Rokas, Lessort and Vaulet instead of Donte*. Wolves waiving
Minnesota should have kept LeDee and waived someone else
Would have been nice for that to happen, but to have to use four more salaries to aggregate the same dollars as Donte would have been difficult. I also believe that the Wolves wanted Donte as part of the deal.
I also get why the Wolves waived LeDee. He’s got talent, but he’s already 24 and only started to break out last year at the college level, playing against guys almost universally younger than him. College 3PT shooting is notoriously meaningless, too, so his 44% from 3 doesn’t mean much, even before noting that he took 1.3 attempts a game.
His approach is to bull-rush the defense and try and break through with power and athleticism. But that’s questionable at the NBA level. He’s not so big that he’d be able to overwhelm similarly sized wings.
Yes LeDee is older but this whole college class is older this year because of the extra senior year. He came out of nowhere so maybe see what he can do. I would sign him to a two way. Edwards is nice but 24 too and the wolves need a really young C prospect and not Edwards unless they traded Garza. Have you seen their two way guys ? Lol I just would have tried him out before Edwards in terms of the roster setup and structure. Or maybe a really young C somewhere out there in the world today
Good chance Minny ‘wanted’ Donte and as indicated previously, the talks picked up because the Knicks were willing to deal him. Doubt the deal happens if he’s not included.
That nugget about the Jeffries, Brown, and Washington deals is hilarious. Adding $1 to each salary so it’s not technically a minimum deal. I assume all three players needed to sign off on that? If so, I wonder what would have happened if one of them held out and asked for more than a buck.
It would quite a game of chicken, since each is making over 2 mm simply to sign a deal that they’ll be released from before they need to put the pen down.
I mean, they could have! They had a ton of leverage.
Who wants Randle?
Apparently Minny.
Help me on the math here, Luke. Why isn’t Randle’s trade bonus coming out to $33,280,632? That’s the number I’m getting for a 15% bonus..,
His cap hit includes a $1,378,080 likely incentive. Trade bonus calculations are based on base salaries, so his cap hit is the base salary ($27,561,600), plus the likely incentive ($1,378,080), plus 15% of the base salary for the trade bonus ($4,134,240).
It’s a nerd’s thing of beauty that the Hornets preserved nearly exactly (plus $144) the amount of a rookie minimum contract amount in their Room Exception. Retains itself as a possible vehicle for a trade (or for signing an undrafted rookie) later on this year.
Seems accidental but it’s a neat bit of serendipity
NYK didn’t circumvent any rule, they structured the deal to comply with the NBA’s poorly structured CBA. Silver & Co. chose to make the CBA a series of endless mechanical rules, byzantine and rigid, and divorced from any concept of intent.
It can and does cut both ways. It wasn’t the intent of the Early Bird Rights provisions in the CBA to apply to someone like Hartenstein (who’s original NYK contract was at market, and who the NYK wanted to re-sign at market). Yet, they did. Fittingly, but for what happened there, nothing would have happened here.