Karl-Anthony Towns seemed very much caught off-guard at getting traded on a random Friday night.
The big news broke late Friday that the Minnesota Timberwolves are trading their four-time All-Star and longest-tenured player Towns to the New York Knicks. The package will net Minnesota another ex-All-Star big man as well as a former NBA champion.
Minutes before the reports emerged, Towns had a notable post to his X page (suggesting that he already knew of the trade before the news went public). He simply posted a ellipsis, often used to indicate speechlessness.
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— Karl-Anthony Towns (@KarlTowns) September 28, 2024
To see the Timberwolves deal away their homegrown star just months after their first conference finals berth in two decades is quite shocking. But there were still very real questions about how Towns fit alongside Rudy Gobert in the Minnesota frontcourt, and the emergence of Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid last season gave the Timberwolves an excellent fallback option.
As for the Knicks, they had been linked to Towns in trade rumors for nearly a year now and are also coached by Tom Thibodeau, Towns’ old head coach in Minnesota. With Isaiah Hartenstein leaving in free agency this summer and Mitchell Robinson still facing a long recovery from left ankle surgery, Towns will get to be the go-to starting center in New York (a role that he wasn’t able to play in Minnesota with Gobert and Reid around).
