Why Knicks had to dance around Karl-Anthony Towns questions at media day: ‘Don’t know who that is’

Karl-Anthony Towns is in New York for Knicks media day. The blockbuster deal bringing him to the Big Apple has been agreed to, and the whole basketball world knows where he will be playing this season. Yet Towns will not speak at Knicks media day, and nobody on the team is allowed to address the deal by league rules. So what’s going on?

Well, the answer is both deceptively simple and potentially quite complicated. Here’s the short version: the trade is not technically complete. As of this moment, Karl-Anthony Towns is still a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves, while Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo are Knicks. Where things get complicated is why the deal has yet to be completed. 

We mostly know the answer to that. It’s a salary matter. And we’ll dive into in a second. First, we must cover the odd dance of Knicks media day, where coaches and players could not comment on the trade since it is not yet official.

“Can’t comment on it,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Nice try.” 

“Who’s Karl?” star guard Jalen Brunson quipped. “Don’t know who that is.”

So why is the money in the yet-to-be-completed deal so complicated? Both the Knicks and Timberwolves were above the first apron before making this trade. Teams above the first apron cannot bring in more salary than they send out in a trade. That meant that they could not trade with one another unless the dollar figures going in both directions were even, as taking back more money in a trade triggers a first apron hard cap that neither team is currently able to work under. This is where the Charlotte Hornets come in. They have agreed to take back the necessary money as a third team to make this trade work.

But the reporting right now suggests that this will not be traditional salary. No, in order to make the money work here, it seems as though the Knicks will be signing-and-trading several of their own free agents to Charlotte for matching purposes. Those players are Charlie Brown Jr., Duane Washington Jr. and DaQuan Jeffries. That means negotiating three separate contracts that fit within sign-and-trade rules, meaning that the deals must last at least three years (though only the first needs to be guaranteed). 

Further complicating all of this? Washington has signed a contract with Partizan in Belgrade, meaning he will need to work out a buyout there in order to participate. Most international contracts have NBA buyouts, so it shouldn’t be a true holdup, but that doesn’t mean Partizan has any reason to operate on New York’s timeline.

That is what we know, or at least what has been reported at this time. It’s also worth noting that we don’t know where this trade stands as far as physicals and medical reports go, and it’s also possible that either team could attempt to expand the deal by including other veterans and picks with a potential fourth team. We know the basic framework at play here. We can reasonably assume that the trade is eventually going to happen. But, just as the NBA forces draftees to wear the wrong hat on draft night when there is a reported trade, league rules dictate that tampering rules be observed until the deal is official. Right now, Karl-Anthony Towns is not a member of the New York Knicks, and until all of the i’s have been dotted and all of the t’s have been crossed, the team must act as though no trade has occurred.