Putting the Towns Trade on Trial

Today we have a special guest piece from NY Giants reporter John Schmeelk. Plus, KAT speaks.

Good morning! Today I’m very proud to present a guest piece from someone all New York Giants fans are familiar with.

John Schmeelk has been covering the G-Men for decades, but has also been a rabid Knicks fan for his entire life. His appearances on the KFS Pod are always a delight, and now he has put pen to paper to explore his thoughts on the Towns trade in great detail. I hope everyone enjoys. First, the news…

News & Notes

🏀 Karl-Anthony Towns made his debut at Knicks practice yesterday, speaking to reporters for a little under eight minutes.

You can listen to the entire clip here.

As you might expect from someone who is incredibly comfortable in front of a microphone, Towns came off as a delight. He said all the right things and seems genuinely excited for this next chapter of his personal and professional journey. Best of all, he referred to Jalen Brunson as “Cap,” so there’s that.

In addition to KAT’s media availability, Tom Thibodeau raised a few eyebrows when he told reporters that New York’s center issues were the “driving force” behind the trade. Count me as dubious. We know the Knicks have been intrigued by Towns for years, well before they were bereft of healthy and proven fives. More than that, the answer was in response to a question about Julius and Donte, and offering a convenient excuse for why they just had to make this deal is a savvy little bit of PR. Thibs’ answer emphasized just how valuable those two were.

This wasn’t about getting just any center. If it was, Nick Richards would be apartment hunting right about now. New York wanted their guy, and they got him.

Putting the Towns Trade on Trial

By John Schmeelk

Jonathan Macri was kind enough to allow me to express my thoughts on the Karl-Anthony Towns trade today. There are many. Probably too many. 

Much like other Knicks fans, I’m ultimately torn on this trade. There’s a fundamental tension after a move like this because of the finality of it. The Knicks have cast their lot. It appeared they already had after they traded the majority of their draft capital for Mikal Bridges during the summer, but with the unsettled question of Julius Randle’s contract and his fit on a championship roster, there was still one more big decision to be made. It came down sooner than any of us expected. 

When sifting through a major move like this, I find it helpful to unravel the trade from every angle and draw conclusions from there. Maybe by the end of this, I’ll know exactly what I think about this trade, and hopefully it will help you come to your own conclusion as well.  

Why Now?

The Knicks decided they would rather swap Randle for Towns than pay him, and the cost was Donte DiVencenzo and the team’s most valuable remaining tradable first round pick. Like most Knicks fans, I wanted to see the team that dominated last January have a shot to play together for a full season with Mikal Bridges and hopefully some decent health. I think it could have been a dominant group, but there are reasons why waiting to find out might not have been possible. 

Between the Knicks’ loss of Isaiah Hartenstein this summer and an injury to Mitchell Robinson that could keep him out into 2025 made them desperate to fill the center position. Tom Thibodeau indicated he could use Randle at center alongside OG Anunoby for stretches, but this was not a long term solution to the problem. Robinson’s injury history made the proposition of counting on him as the team’s long term center similarly dubious. 

Is Towns the perfect center? Obviously not, otherwise the Wolves never would have traded most of their future assets for Rudy Gobert with the abject purpose of sliding Towns to power forward. He is still obviously a better option at center than Julus Randle. I’ll get more into their skillsets later. 

Timing was also a big part of this. If the Knicks had concluded they were not going to be able to extend Randle and he was uninterested in opting into his player option, this was the best time to trade him. The sign and trade market next summer would have very likely yielded little return (see DeRozan, DeMar) and the Knicks would have lost a player without getting much value in return (or worse, they could have been forced into locking in a player they didn’t think could be the second best player on a title team). Teams over the cap and out of draft picks can’t risk letting a player with the value of Julius Randle leave without getting commensurate value in return. Jeremy Cohen needs his continuous soup! 

Executing a trade like this during the regular season around the trade deadline would have been extremely difficult. This exact construction would have been impossible. The Knicks couldn’t have made a trade like this, where multiple sign and trades of players who ended last year on the roster was the only way to make it CBA and cap compliant. 

If it happened during the year, making the money work might have been impossible, though Brock Aller’s sorcery should never be underestimated. It might have forced the team to part with another rotation player like Mitchell Robinson, Josh Hart or Deuce McBride just to satisfy cap rules.

The other timing factor is Jalen Brunson’s prime. The luxury of patience is gone. Brunson is 28 years old but is also an undersized guard that will take on a ton of usage in the next few years. Undersized guards, especially one that constantly drives into the paint and hits the floor as often as Brunson does, can fall off a cliff performance-wise at any time. The Knicks need to maximize every second of his prime and if they believe Towns significantly increases their title window, then getting him in the door as soon as possible is the correct move. It can sometimes take a full year for a team to find their chemistry together. If Towns didn’t arrive until next year, the Knicks might not have their best shot at a title until Brunson is 30.

Would this trade have happened if the Oklahoma City Thunder hadn’t thrown that irresistible bag of cash at Isaiah Hartenstein? I think so, but I don’t know for sure. It’s also possible that the Knicks would have been more patient and less desperate with Hartenstein on the roster and played hard ball long enough to avoid trading DiVincenzo, but reporting about Minnesota’s desire for Donte makes that unlikely. 

In the end, the Knicks’ interest in Towns’ unique skillset moved the needle on this trade much more than Randle’s contract or even their need for a center. Reporting from Fred Katz regarding the Knicks’ frequent off-and-on pursuit of Towns supports this theory. Their desire for Towns’ skillset was the driving force of the trade. 

Why Towns?

Karl-Anthony Towns is a better player than Julius Randle. I have defended Randle to Knicks fans and constantly warned against trading for Karl-Anthony Towns, but putting salaries aside even I can’t debate this basic point. Towns is better. There are certain skills in basketball that are more valuable than others. One of the most important is shooting. Towns is probably the best shooting center in the NBA.  

The Knicks famously hired the author of an analytics paper arguing there is no such thing as a stretch five. The better argument is that most centers shouldn’t be described as stretch fives because they don’t shoot efficiently enough from behind the 3-point line to force teams to respect their shot, and thus provide spacing. 

Karl-Anthony Towns is a career 39.8 percent 3-point shooter on 4.3 attempts per game. In his past six seasons, he is averaging 5.5 attempts per game and shooting 40.1% on those attempts. It’s great efficiency on heavy volume. He is a stretch five and a damn good one. Chicks dig the long ball, and so, apparently, does Leon Rose. 

Julius Randle has not had a non-COVID season where he has shot better than 34.5 percent from deep and has only one season where he has attempted more than 5.5 triples per game. Towns’ ability to shoot gives the Knicks so much more freedom to build lineups given his ability to space the floor. Julius Randle and Precious Achiuwa playing together would have been a congested mess. With Towns on the court, the Knicks can still play four-out if he is joined by Achiuwa at power forward or Mitchell Robinson at center. He not only opens the floor, but opens Thibodeau’s lineup options. 

Towns also raises the ceiling of New York’s best lineups. A potential closing lineup of Towns-Anunoby-Bridges-Brunson-Hart/McBride is an offensive juggernaut and virtually unguardable. There’s no answer to a Brunson-Towns pick and roll that shouldn’t lead to a high percentage shot. Every player can make an open three or take advantage of being left alone by the opposing defense. 

(If you don’t want to include Josh Hart in that category, go ask the 76ers and Pacers how it went for them when they decided to leave him open.)

I hate boiling down any player comparison to a single number but it is hard to get around this one: Karl-Anthony Towns’ career effective field goal percentage is .576 and Julius Randle’s is .509. The best EFG% season of Randle’s Knick career was .536. Towns’ worst EFG% season is .555. True shooting percentage tells the same story. 

Towns is simply a better offensive player than Julius Randle. Towns’ shooting prowess is more valuable than anything Randle does with the basketball. It doesn’t mean there aren’t things to be concerned about but they don’t move the needle enough to overcome this fundamental difference between the players. 

Why Not Towns? 

The isn’t a move without real risks and downsides, even if it was a straight-up swap of Randle for Towns. While both players are below average defenders, the impact of Towns’ poor rim protection at center has the potential to be more detrimental than Randle’s lapses and maddening tendencies not to rotate, get back on defense or hustle. 

When guarding a shooter within six feet of the rim, Towns allowed opponents to shoot 63 percent, a full 10 percent higher than Isaiah Hartenstein. His field goal percentage allowed was also higher than Precious Achiuwa (58.7%), Josh Hart (59.7%), OG Anunoby (55.1%), Deuce McBride (56.1%) RJ Barrett (61.6%), Immanuel Quickley (62.5%), and yes, even Julius Randle (61.8%). There was a good reason the Timberwolves decided to empty the coffers for Rudy Gobert to hide Towns’ inefficiencies as a rim protecting center. 

Towns’ lack of mobility also makes him a less switchable player than Randle. For all his defensive issues, Randle had the athleticism to switch onto smaller players and stay in front of them. He also had the strength to bang with centers if need be. Towns will struggle to stay in front of smaller guards and quicker wings. His tendency to foul in the playoffs is also something to watch when he is put into disadvantageous situations. 

It’s an oversimplification, but Towns’ strengths and weaknesses are defined well by his on/off numbers. When he was on the court the Wolves were 6.2 points per 100 possessions better offensively but 4.4 points worse defensively.

Despite his elite scoring, there are things Towns does not do as well as Julius Randle as an offensive player. Randle has sported a usage rate of 28.7 or more in each of his last four seasons. In Towns’ last three seasons, that figure has been below 27.8. According to NBA.com, Towns recorded assists on just 13.2% of his possessions, his lowest rate in the last five seasons and the fourth lowest rate among 49 players with a usage rate of 25 or higher. 

There’s more. Towns averaged just 1.9 minutes of possession last season - fifth on the Wolves and the lowest rate of his career, with his 2.9 post-ups per game also being a career low. He was assisted on 73.5 percent of his field goals, also the highest mark of his career. His catch and shoot ability will help the Knicks be a more efficient offense, but when compared to Julius Randle, he will take a smaller load of the offense on his shoulders. It is possible that he can go back to a higher usage rate like he had from 2018-2021, when he had the ball in his hands about as much as Randle, but there is a chance that in his age-29 season, Towns simply isn’t as good at creating shots for himself as he once was. 

One argument for Julius Randle being essential to this roster was his ability to take some playmaking off of Jalen Brunson in order to keep him fresh late in games and in the playoffs. Can Towns and Mikal Bridges fill the void left by Randle so Brunson isn’t taxed with too much of the offensive load? We’ll have to wait and see. It is essential if the Knicks want Brunson to be their closer in the playoffs. 

Much has also been made of Randle’s playoff failures, when he has played far from his best basketball. The same has been said of Karl-Anthony Towns. Towns’ playoff numbers are far better than Randle’s, but are still a drop-off compared to Towns’ regular season dominance. Towns played well in the Wolves seven game series victory against the Nuggets but struggled in his first three games in the Western Conference Finals against the Mavericks, averaging only 15 points per game and shooting 15-for-54 from the field. 

Julius Randle was a constant source of controversy amongst Knicks fans with his defensive inefficiency and flashes of immaturity. I fear Towns will all too similar, with proclamations like him being “the greatest big man shooter of all time”. His postgame remarks will be dissected on WFAN and Twitter on a nightly basis. Does it truly matter? No. Does it help things? No. 

Pressure Points

While the Towns trade does give Tom Thibodeau more lineup flexibility, it also robs him of depth at the wing with the loss of Donte DiVincenzo. The new roster construction will put added pressure on a number of players who will be asked to do a little bit more. 

OG Anunoby: Time to earn your $212.5 million dollar contract young man, and it starts by staying on the floor. Anunoby is the team’s only high-quality option at power forward now. Precious Achiuwa is on the bench but he does not provide the offensive firepower, shooting, or defensive versatility of Anunoby. The potential greatness of the Knicks’ roster depends on Anunoby, who has played more than 50 games just once since 2020. There will also be pressure on him to be a better rebounder - an area he has not excelled in his career, regardless of position.

Precious Achiuwa: Say hello to the Knicks backup center and backup power forward until Mitchell Robinson returns. He could play anywhere from 25-32 minutes a night depending on how much they want to tax Towns and Anunoby from a minutes perspective. They will need him to provide strong minutes, especially on the defensive end. 

Jalen Brunson: There is no one else on this team you can run an offense through for a long period of time. Julius Randle could take that mantle against certain matchups. It’s possible that Mikal Bridges can pick up more of the slack as well, and that Towns can be more of the creator he was earlier in his career. Brunson is a smaller guard and the Knicks have to be careful not to ride him too heavily early in games and in the regular season so he has the energy to close out games in the postseason. 

Deuce McBride: Most of Donte DiVencenzo’s minutes are going to go to McBride, who could even become a quasi-starter given his likely minutes load. I don’t think he will play much point guard, though every minute Bridges and Hart are on the bench, McBride should on the court. He could even share time with both if the Knicks decide to play Hart at power forward next to Towns when Anunoby rests. McBride could easily be a 30+ minute per game player and he has to continue his strong play from last year with an even bigger workload. 

Did the Knicks overpay? 

This was not a one-for-one trade. Given the contract situations of Randle (one year remaining, plus a player option) and Towns (entering the first year of a four-year, $224 million contract extension), one could argue that Donte DiVincenzo was the most tradable player in this deal. Was he too steep a price to pay for the upgrade of Randle to Towns? 

DiVincenzo, to paraphrase our illustrious Dean Jonathan Macri, was basically peak Klay Thompson for much of last year, shooting over 40 percent on nearly nine 3-point attempts per game and playing strong defense. He did that playing on one of the best contracts in basketball, earning less than $12 million annually for three more seasons. 

Towns’ contract might not have made him a toxic asset, but certainly one that many teams around the NBA would have been extremely hesitant to trade for (if they were even functionally able to). Based on reporting, Julius Randle’s value around the league also wasn’t high despite multiple All-NBA awards and a far lower current salary. In some ways, it makes perfect sense for those two players to be traded for each other. Could either the Wolves or Knicks have found a better player to swap for their star? It was one imperfect asset for another. 

With the Wolves trying to save on luxury tax payments and the ongoing legal battle over their ownership, could the Knicks have waited them out and gotten this deal done without including DiVincenzo? There’s no way to know, but as we discussed earlier, this trade could not have been made during the regular season in its current construction. Randle may hit free agency next summer, making a deal then extremely difficult. The Wolves might have also decided that keeping Towns was more important than the financials without DiVincenzo in the trade. 

The most convincing argument that the Knicks were right to pull the trigger now despite losing a darn good player at the most valuable position in basketball (an elite shooting, two-way wing) is that New York has three other players who can slide in and give a reasonable facsimile of the production DiVincenzo provides. Bridges, Hart and McBride are all good players and before this trade both McBride and DiVincenzo might have struggled to consistently top 20 minutes. They were in a position of luxurious excess. 

The Knicks traded a player from a position of their greatest strength to acquire a player that fills their position of greatest weakness. They already had a player on the roster to absorb DiVincenzo’s minutes in McBride. Towns was the best player in the trade. As much as it hurts to lose a player like DiVincenzo - someone who did everything fans loved to see, from making huge shots that won playoff games to making all the hustle plays on loose balls - it was probably worth it. 

I do draw the line at the draft compensation the Knicks had to send, and Leon Rose should have done the same. There’s a better than 50 percent chance, in my opinion, that the Pistons’ pick eventually conveys as a first rounder. The Knicks now have no tradable first round picks, spare one swap a half-decade in the future. For a team capped out like they are, having even a protected first rounder can be very valuable. DiVincenzo and Randle were more than enough value for a player like Towns that the Timberwolves would have struggled to find a suitor elsewhere given his salary. 

Then there are the multiple second round picks the Knicks had to send to Charlotte for them to complete the Picasso of Brock Aller’s CBA compliance. (It’s gotten to the point where I’m not even going to worry about the money matching on future Knicks trades. I’ll just assume Aller is going to find some 40 year old from Finland the Knicks acquired the draft rights to twenty years ago to use in a sign and trade to make it all work. See: Koponen, Petteri.) Randle, DiVincenzo, a protected first round pick and two seconds is too steep a price for a flawed player on an enormous contract like Towns that few teams would ever be able to absorb. 

So Was This The Right Move? 

I hoped writing this article would give me some clarity on his trade. It was the selfish reason I asked Macri to let me sub in for him on the newsletter one day this week. I needed to put all this down on paper to work through the trade in my head. It’s helped a little bit, but I still have my doubts, even though I reached a conclusion.

As the Knicks compiled assets since Leon Rose became the GM, my common refrain was always “just don’t cash them in for Karl-Anthony Towns.” It’s what made this trade so difficult for me to get excited about. But they didn’t cash in all their assets for Towns. The Knicks cashed all their draft assets in for Mikal Bridges. They packaged their own flawed star to acquire another flawed star at the cost of one of the best role players in basketball and three relatively low-value draft picks. 

Was it an overpay? 

Yes. 

Should Leon Rose have pulled the trigger anyway? 

Yes. 

Sometimes you have to overpay to get what you really want. Leon Rose showed he was willing to go the extra mile to convince the Nets to move Mikal Bridges and it appears he has done the same with Towns. 

I don’t believe that the Knicks roster as constructed before the Towns trade could win a championship. Could they have gotten to an Eastern Conference Final, or maybe even a NBA Finals with some help from lady luck? Sure. But the lack of a center, Julius Randle’s playoff struggles and his recent injuries made me wary they could have sustained a high enough level of play across enough series to earn a parade down the Canyon of Heroes. The roster did have an exceedingly high floor with the best depth in the league at the most important position in the league, with five two-way wings who could guard multiple positions. 

But while that team might have been built for sustained regular season success, even more so than the current roster, I don’t think it was ideally built to win the sixteen games necessary to bring home the Larry O’Brien trophy.  There was a cap on that team’s ceiling that would have brought some amazing moments but ultimately left Knicks fans short of their title dreams. Do Knicks fan really believe they could have won a title with Julius Randle playing center in some of the biggest moments? That’s a hard sell. 

With Karl-Anthony Towns now onboard, the best version of this Knicks roster is a better playoff team than the Knicks roster with Randle and DiVincenzo. I might like the nine man roster the Knicks had before this trade, but I like the seven man roster post-trade far better. In the playoffs I’ll take the best seven guys over the best nine guys all-day, every-day. 

It’s Brunson, DiVincenzo, Bridges, Anunoby, Randle, Mitch, Hart, McBride and Precious

vs. 

Brunson, Hart, Bridges, Anunoby, Towns, Mitch and McBride 

In the closing minutes of a fourth quarter in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Celtics I would prefer Brunson-Hart/McBride-Bridges-Anunoby-Towns to any of the configurations I can put around a Brunson-Randle led five-man lineup. For New York to beat Boston, a five man group featuring Karl-Anthony Towns gives them a better matchup than the players previously in the building. The Knicks can match the Celtics stretch-five with Towns, and counter their versatile wings and guards with their own set. In the end, that’s why Leon Rose made the trade. It was the right move. 

With that potential for greatness comes substantial risk. Without the additional depth on the wing, a regular season injury to a player like Anunoby could be crippling. If Towns flops as a defensive center, the Knicks will be in the same situation the Wolves were in when they had to package all their assets to land Rudy Gobert. The Knicks will have no such luxury. The hope is that Tom Thibodeau’s defensive chops can overcome Towns’ defensive flaws. 

In the end, I don’t think there was going to be a way to turn Julius Randle into a better player than Towns given the other assets the Knicks had at their disposal and Randle’s expiring contract. Waiting would have only made a trade like this harder to pull off. It also might have been impossible to make a deal that kept the Knicks from being over the second apron for more than two consecutive seasons, which this trade seems to have pulled off. It might not seem like a big deal but it matters for the franchise’s long term health. 

Thanks to Leon Roses’s wheeling and dealing, Brock Aller’s cap brilliance, and Jalen Brunson’s willingness to sign for less money, the Knicks have a legitimate four-year window with this core group of players to make a run at a championship. The Celtics’ salary structures will make it difficult for them to keep their roster together beyond two seasons. In the current NBA, a four-year window is a LONG TIME. 

I understand the tension and wariness Knicks fans are feeling today. There’s a feeling of finality to a move of this magnitude. Might they be able to someday swap Karl-Anthony Towns out for another high salaried player? Sure, but I fear that trade would look more like the Bucks trade for Damian Lillard where their options were limited by a lack of assets and salary cap restraints than a true move of opportunity like the Bridges trade. Could the Knicks package enough valuable assets to get the Bucks to trade Giannis for Towns if the former ever actually demands a trade? I’m not convinced. 

This is the core of the Knicks team that is going to try to win a championship for the foreseeable future and there isn’t much left in the cupboard aside from players already in the team’s rotation to make further upgrades. The only truly tradable assets on this roster right now are Josh Hart, Deuce McBride, and Mitchell Robinson and all three are vitally important to the team’s success. Any future move would involve hurting one area to help another. 

It’s a position this generation of Knicks fans have never been in, and it’s scary. Since the Patrick Ewing era (discounting the many depressing years the team sold its future for no discernible present gain), the Knicks have not been in this situation, unless you want to count the Melo-Stoudemire-Chandler years, though I never considered that group a true contender.  

There was always the next draft, the final all-in trade, or the young player that could develop into a star to look forward to. There was always the ever-alluring hope of the unknown. 

Now, there’s just this roster trying to win a championship, and if they aren’t good enough, the organization is stuck for the next few years. But the good news is that this Knicks team has something else in common with the teams from the Patrick Ewing era: They have a real chance to win an NBA Championship. That’s pretty awesome and is going to be a hell of a lot of fun to watch. It has been a long time coming. The future is our present. And it’s bright. Now, go win.

Enjoy the season, Knicks fans. Lord knows you’ve earned it.

John Schmeelk is the Director of Editorial and Audio content for the New York Giants. You can find his Giants podcasts at giants.com/podcasts or search for Big Blue Kickoff Live or Giants Huddle Podcast on your favorite podcast platform. You can follow him on twitter for his random Knicks takes @Schmeelk.

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”