A New Era

Now that the shock has worn off, let's get into the nuts and bolts of a franchise-altering trade.

GOOD MORNING! It’s unofficially the start of a new season today, which means the free Monday newsletter is back and better than ever. If you’ve been craving more content on the big trade, you’ve come to the right place. Don’t forget to also check out the various podcasts I’ve recorded since the news, which you can also see on YouTube. Let’s get started…

News & Notes

It’s finally here.

Media Day will take place today for 28 of the NBA’s 30 teams, with the Celtics and Nuggets having opened camp last week ahead of their trip to Abu Dhabi.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for the Knicks, no one will be able to talk about the one thing on everyone’s mind.

As of late Sunday night, the trade sending Karl-Anthony Towns to New York in exchange for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo had not been finalized, with the anticipation that it won’t become official until some time early this week. As a result, you won’t hear any soundbites today about the thing that everyone knows is happening.

Of course, that won’t stop us from continuing to digest a mighty big Matzah ball…

A New Era

Even after a full weekend, we’re still wrapping our heads around it.

There are so many pieces to this trade that I want to dive deeper into (see: my list of a dozen questions from Saturday morning) that I know I won’t be able to get to it all in one day. As a result, expect a lot of KAT talk for the next several weeks.

For today though, I’ve spotlighted eight of the most interesting aspects of the deal and tried to peel back a few layers.

1. Donte’s Value

To get us started, we have a question from America’s favorite television critic, Alan Sepinwall:

Once trading Donte DiVincenzo became an option, is there a Donte-for-center trade you would have preferred to this deal, where we would have gotten a Mitch upgrade in the starting five while also keeping Julius? Utah’s Walker Kessler perhaps?

The reporting strongly suggests that New York’s braintrust had specifically targeted Towns for some time, and that DiVincenzo was the price of admission. Once Minnesota agreed to the deal, I doubt they had any inclination to go back to the drawing board and consider other Donte-centric trades that didn’t return their ultimate prize.

To answer Alan’s question, I don’t think they should have, for a few reasons.

As frequent readers know, player valuation is my favorite NBA concept to contemplate, mostly because it’s almost entirely theoretical and no one really knows anything for sure. That uncertainty goes doubly so for role players.

In a vacuum, Donte might be the best value contract in the league, which is an argument I made late last season. In theory, no one wouldn’t want a 27-year-old sharpshooter who recently evoked comps to prime Klay Thompson and aptly defends his position.

But “wanting” is different than “coveting,” and the Minnesota Timberwolves certainly slot into the latter category. As a team clearly unwilling to go into the second apron (see: this trade), the value of a major rotation piece making less than $12 million for the next three seasons is immense. They are also a contender, so win-now talent was of the essence in any KAT trade. Finally, they have as much of a need for DiVincenzo as any contending team in the league.

Compare that to a team like Utah: nowhere close to winning (and maybe even a preference for losing), no tax or apron concerns, and a strong desire to foster and grow their young talent.

Obviously a guy like Ainge is always up for flipping an asset for better value down the road, but is DiVincenzo the sort of player who would generate a Godfather-level return? My personal dividing line for this sort of question is whether a player warrants a future unprotected (or very lightly protected) pick or swap. We can consider Derrick White as the baseline here, after he netted the Spurs a distant top-one protected pick swap from Boston a few years ago.

White is a nominal point guard who just made All-Defense. Folks smarter than me seem to regard him as a top 50 player in the league. DiVincenzo isn’t quite at that level, mostly because he’s a somewhat slight 6'4", isn’t a point guard, and doesn’t offer much on-ball creation. He’s an exceptional role player, but there’s a good chance that if the Knicks were fully healthy, DiVincenzo would have seen around 20-25 minutes a game, and even less in a high level playoff series.

For that reason, I’m not sure the Knicks missed out on any great opportunity here. Even if someone like Kessler was on the table, I would rather have KAT. That may seem controversial, so to explain why, let’s get to the next topic…

2. All In On Offense

In 2004, the Detroit Pistons (a team I wrote about earlier this summer as a possible Knicks comp) won the NBA championship with the 19th ranked offense in the league thanks in large part to one of the greatest defenses in NBA history. That title coincided with the nadir of league-wide offense, which had been gradually trending down for two decades.

Since then, things have been steadily going in the other direction. Over the last dozen years, the eventual NBA champion has had a top-five offense 10 times, and top-three six times. The two exceptions were teams that employed LeBron James (‘20 Lakers) and Steph Curry (‘22 Warriors), two of the most devastating offensive forces in league history.

This isn’t to say defense no longer matters. Seven of those 12 teams had a top-five defense, including five in the top-three. But we’ve also seen teams with the 9th, 10th, 11th, and most recently with Denver, the 15th best defense win it all.

Before his recent untimely departure from ESPN, Zach Lowe was fond of talking about how the pendulum was starting to swing more towards a dominant offense being a greater indicator of a title than a top defense. The Nuggets really laid the blueprint here, riding elite scoring (118.2 postseason offensive rating, highest in recorded history) and a just-good-enough defense to the 2023 title. Last season, Dallas didn’t win it all, but they made the Finals with the 18th ranked regular season defense.

Again, it should be noted that Boston’s second ranked defense maintained its stinginess through 16 postseason wins, but they also depended on their top-ranked offense to carry them to several victories as well.

In making this trade, the Knicks clearly believe that the recent trend isn’t reversing, and in Towns, they’ve increased their offensive potential from “really, really good” to “five alarm fire.”

But did they need to do it now, before ever seeing this team take the court?

Why yes, in fact, they did.

3. What’s the Rush?

From now until the start of the regular season, NBA teams are allowed to carry 21 players on their roster. The Hornets, conveniently enough, only have 19 players at the moment.

In making this trade before the season starts, the Knicks were able to make the math work without needing to further upend the core of their team. They can ship off three players via sign & trade, and Charlotte (after they cut one of their three Exhibit 10 guys, presumably) can inherit those contracts, promptly waive anyone they don’t want, and everyone moves on.

Once the regular season begins though, rosters are limited to 15 players. Not only would the Knicks have been unable to sign players to immediately trade away, but no team would have had the roster space to inherit such flotsam.

That means an in-season trade would have been considerably more complicated. For one, the Wolves would have filled in the rest of their roster and would have needed to waive multiple players to accommodate a 3-for-1 swap¹.

After that, there would still be another gap of over $6 million to make up. Every player on New York’s roster earning enough to make up that difference is a key rotation piece. They could have packaged Precious and a minimum, but again, there’s a roster spot issue that likely would have required them finding a third team with a) the ability to open up roster space and b) an exception into which they could inherit the additional money.

With all the hoops Brock Aller already had to jump through to get this deal done, waiting until the middle of the season would have made what was already hard downright impossible.

4. Small Ball: Grounded Before It Ever Took Off?

Part of the problem with analyzing the various angles of this trade is that none of them exist in a vacuum.

For instance, saying that New York didn’t have confidence in the long term viability of small-ball - something that was, almost without question, the only way the Knicks were ever going to get all of their most talented players on the floor at the same time - is too simplistic. Randle’s contract situation factors in massively in the decision to shift course, as do a handful of other factors.

In the end though, there had to exist at least some doubt that this roster was capable of winning four playoff rounds with a Randle/OG front court playing prominent minutes.

But why stop there. What if they looked at the potential of that unit, with its benefits and drawbacks, and asked themselves “why stop there?”

Randle can do things with the ball that KAT can’t. He’s a superior playmaker and a back-to-the-basket nightmare in a way KAT isn’t. Even with those positives, the offensive ceiling should still be raised significantly after this deal.

That’s true if Towns plays the four, but it’s especially true if he plays the five, which is where we get back to the small-ball comp. Randle and Towns are very different defenders with similar weaknesses (both stink in drop) and different strengths (Julius can be good in switches; KAT has gotten great at hedging and recovering). All things considered, Towns’ size alone gives you more defensive versatility as the nominal five than Randle ever could (see: his defense on Jokic in the playoffs last season).

In this sense, I wonder if the front office didn’t view this trade as having their cake and eating it too: all the benefits of small ball with a much bigger body to play around with on defense. That’s why Towns has always been so alluring, and what many have forgotten with him playing out of position the last two years. This trade should represent a return to form.

Even so, it came with a significant cost, which brings us to…

5. Depth re-Charge?

One big issue people seem to have with this trade is that New York went from one of the deepest teams in the league to one that is suddenly a little shallow.

Assuming Thibs doesn’t surprise us all by starting Precious Achiuwa (never say never; the man has a thing for size), New York will have very questionable guard/wing depth beyond whomever of Deuce or Hart doesn’t start. So just how big of a deal is this?

As always, it depends - in this case, primarily on injuries. The best part of the pre-KAT roster was that New York had the ability to easily withstand one or even two missing players that don’t play center and who aren’t named Jalen Brunson. Now that isn’t the case. Or is it?

We know Precious Achiuwa is a strong depth piece capable of filling in minutes at the four or the five. Cameron Payne isn’t the sexiest name, but he’s appeared in 58 playoff games, most of which came as part of a rotation for a good team, and he was at least serviceable for Philly against New York last season, hitting 8-of-18 from long range across six games. Tyler Kolek is probably the biggest unknown, and it’s hard to see a world where both he and Payne play #meaningful minutes, but his emergence as a rotation cog isn’t out of the question. Mook is more of a 4/5 at this point in his career, Shamut seems boxed out by superior guards, and rookie Pacome Dadiet is still in his embryonic stage as an NBA player, but all carry the potential to step in and help here and there.

It all adds up the need, ideally, for one more wing - partially as a safeguard against injury, and partially as a necessity against the bigger teams they could come across in the playoffs. The only feasible way to acquire such a player at this point would be to send out Mitchell Robinson, which begs an immediate question: what is the best use of limited resources? If Towns is primarily a five, how much more expendable does that make Mitch?

There is one other benefit to moving Mitch and bringing in a lower salaried player. As it stands, after this trade the Knicks will be closer to the second apron than Linus is to his blanket. They still have access to the $5.2 million taxpayer midlevel, which could be used to sign a buyout guy who made less than $12.9 million, but they’re functionally barred from using the TP-MLE because it would take them over the apron. Opening up more salary space would alleviate this issue.

On the flip side, KAT hasn’t exactly been an iron man, and moving Mitch would leave the Knicks incredibly thin at center. They could still go small even without Randle and use OG at the five (along with Precious and Sims), but this is just another part of the cost benefit analysis that needs to be considered.

There is a subtle irony to all of this. One of the thoughts behind moving Randle was that the Knicks had a few too many starting caliber players. The cost of moving him, naturally, was one of those starters in waiting.

Speaking of Julius….

6. The Randle of it All

I wonder what this trade will do to Julius Randle’s earning potential next summer. In short, I’m not sure he’s better off now than he would have been with whatever the Knicks were offering.

Brian Windhorst wrote a 1500-word article on this trade over the weekend, and more than half of those words related to how it was motivated by Minnesota’s financial issues. Keeping Towns would have made it impossible to retain key impending free agents Naz Reid and Nickeil Alexander-Walker while staying under the second apron.

What does that mean for Randle? Not only would signing him to the sort of extension he’s likely seeking defeat the purpose of this deal, but Julius opting in to his $30 million player option next summer could have them looking for someplace to unload his salary.

Of course there’s a chance that all this gets turned on its head and Randle helps lead the Wolves to their first Finals in franchise history, but it’s just as likely he’s watching from the bench during crunch time, stuck behind the sweeter shooting (and arguably better defending) Reid, not to mention the other Knick involved in this trade, Donte DiVincenzo. I wouldn’t even bet on him finishing the season in Minny².

This is clearly a situation New York wanted no part of, leading to a decision we probably should have seen coming.

If you remember way back in the beginning of the summer, I wrote about why the Knicks would want the Randle situation resolved one way or another, and that they would either trade him or agree to an extension before the season began. The ultimate conclusion I reached - that they wouldn’t find a workable trade and would offer Julius a $181.5 million extension - couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s apparent now that they never saw Randle as a player worth going into the second apron for.

After the August 3rd extension window opened and not so much as a stiff breeze came through it, I figured I was off base on my initial prediction as well, and that New York was comfortable enough with the uncomfortable Randle contract situation to let it play out.

Clearly, they weren’t, which led us to…

7. The Most Interesting NBA Trade Ever?

Hyperbole? Perhaps.

But ask yourself: how many times in the 78-year history of the NBA have we seen:

• A trade between two contending teams³

• Involving two former multi-time All-NBA players

• Both of whom are 30 or under

• And who have generated as much controversy and consternation as Towns and Randle, respectively?

That last part is what makes this stand out for me. Rarely do players make it to their third NBA contract and still have people asking questions like “can this guy be the second banana on a title team?” or “what is his best position?” or “should anyone want him on his current/next contract?”

And yet these questions are routinely asked about both of the big men involved in this deal. Maybe the two negatives cancel each other out and we’re left with a simple swap of imperfect players, but I think it goes deeper than that, at least where Towns is concerned. More on that in a bit. First, finding a trade comp…

We did have the Kawhi-to-Toronto move in 2018, but Leonard was coming off an injury, but we knew exactly what he and DeMar DeRozen were in 2018. Russ for CP3 and Russ for Wall were glorified salary dumps. There was the Simmons/Harden swap, but even if the bloom wasn’t completely off Ben Simmons’ rose yet, there was zero question Philly was getting much better. Speaking of Philly, former Sixer MVP Allen Iverson was sent from Denver to Detroit for Chauncey Billups in 2008. That comes close to this one, but those teams were heading in opposite directions.

I thought about a trade involving two future former Knicks from 20 years ago. Steve Francis was a three-time All-Star when Houston swapped him for T-Mac, and was considered roughly the same level of player that Randle is now. McGrady was a brighter star than KAT, but there were still questions about how much his game translated to winning. The big difference is that Orlando was atrocious at the time, so the stakes were far lower for one of the parties.

Ray Allen for Gary Payton? Jason Kidd for Stephon Marbury? Dominique Wilkins for Danny Manning? None are perfect comps. This might be one of one.

Which brings us to…

8. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Nine years ago, Karl-Anthony Towns was drafted into the NBA with quite a bit of fanfare. While not on the level his fellow Wildcat Anthony Davis a few years earlier, there was enough excitement for 62.1 percent of NBA general managers to predict he’d be the best player from his class five years after that draft.

For the next two years - following Towns’ rookie season and sophomore campaign - those same GM’s named KAT as the player they’d most want to build a team around.

Not among his draft mates from the class of 2015. Among every player in the league.

Getting the nod over former and future MVP’s and several of the greatest players ever, Towns was viewed as the next great big man who would dominate the sport.

In the seven years since that second poll, KAT has been anything but a bust. He’s made the All-Star team more than half the time, has been named to a few All-NBA teams, and is one of five players who has averaged at least 23 points on at least a 58 effective field goal percentage, the others being Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry. He is the youngest member of that group.

At the same time, he has been a part of just two playoff series victories, neither of which featured him as the best player. He has also played in an average of just 50 games over the last five seasons, and is slated to be one of the 10 highest paid NBA players for the next four years⁴. He has never received an MVP vote.

Nearing his 29th birthday, it’s not unfair to say that Karl-Anthony Towns is at a crossroads.

If his time in New York goes poorly, he will be remembered as one of the great wasted talents in league history, and in all likelihood, a cautionary tale for any team wondering whether to max out a non-superstar. His prodigious numbers will look like nothing more than empty calories.

The other road? The other road is much more fun.

If Towns can make another All-Star team or two and be one of the top players on the team that ends New York’s title drought, there’s a good chance he’ll eventually be enshrined in Springfield. It’s not a perfect comp, but it’s been a little more than 50 years since the Knicks acquired another former Rookie of the Year who had a checkered reputation. All Jerry Lucas did when he came here was average 20, 10 & 6 in the 1972 Finals before helping the Knicks win their second world championship the following year. His closing act in the Big Apple was the push he needed to be named one of the NBA’s 75 greatest players ever.

Ending up on the league’s top 100 list in 21 years is probably unrealistic for Towns, but New York doesn’t need him to be that level of player for this trade to be a resounding success. All KAT needs to do it be the best version of himself, and that’ll be more than enough.

Whether he can do that will likely be the difference between ending the Knicks’ 51-year (and counting) championship drought or not.

No pressure or anything.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1. Recall that including Keita Bates-Diop is necessary for New York to make up some of the salary gap

2. The funniest possible outcome, by far: Minnesota sends Randle to Toronto to re-unite with his old Knick buddies in exchange for the expiring $23 million pact of Bruce Brown.

3. They have 2 of the 6 best odds to win it all

4. This ranking will go down once a few superstars sign their next extensions, but it will still be in the 15 or so.