Karl-Anthony Towns is officially a member of the New York Knicks, as the stunning trade that broke last Friday was finalized on Wednesday, as the Knicks, Timberwolves, Hornets, and the league worked out all of the final details to make the trade legal under the collective bargaining agreement.
The final deal sends Towns and the draft rights to James Nnaji to the Knicks, Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop, and a future pick to the Wolves, and DaQuan Jeffries, Charlie Brown, Duane Washington Jr., and two future second round picks to the Hornets. Under the new CBA, pulling off this deal was incredibly complicated because the Knicks are a first apron team, putting restrictions on aggregating salaries and taking money back in a deal. As such, they had to get very creative in crafting this deal, signing and trading away players they still held free agent rights on to Charlotte to make it financially viable.
Not only did they have to sign guys to trade them, they also had to sign players to deals worth more than the minimum, as apron teams cannot aggregate minimum salaries to match money in a trade. As Fred Katz of The Athletic reported on Wednesday, the Knicks found a loophole in the CBA and signed those players they traded to the Hornets to deals worth $1 more than the minimum to meet that requirement.
Katz noted the league isn’t exactly thrilled the Knicks figured out this loophole, and you can expect that to be closed up by next offseason — how, specifically, we’ll have to wait and see. Still, it’s fantastic work by the Knicks to figure out a way to make this happen and it continues their turn from a laughingstock as a franchise for a decade-plus to one of the smartest front offices in the NBA.