Inside the Knicks’ strategy and maneuvering to bring Karl-Anthony Towns to New York

Months before the New York Knicks traded for one of the planet’s greatest scorers, an ambitious teenager changed their future.

On draft night, just after the team agreed to a blockbuster deal for Mikal Bridges and with the front office eyeing a swap for another star, an open secret caught wind around the league: The Knicks owned the Nos. 24 and 25 picks, and they were bound to trade at least one of them.

New York needed to pinch pennies, though not because the organization was cheap. Such is the way of today’s NBA, which has implemented a collective bargaining agreement that’s more punitive than any of its predecessors. An opening appeared for Pacome Dadiet, an 18-year-old who eventually became the Knicks’ only 2024 first-round pick.

Dadiet, attending the draft at Barclays Center with his agent, Yann Balikouzou, was willing to risk the weight of his wallet to ensure his new home. As the draft galloped through the teens, Dadiet’s people learned the Knicks were interested in the French prospect, though Dadiet might not get all the money usually promised to the 25th draft choice.

Salaries for first-rounders are mostly predetermined with a system called “the rookie scale,” which says draftees Nos. 1 through 30 can make as much as 120 percent of a mandated range and as little as 80. The higher the pick, the higher the salary. But whatever the range, rarely does a player take less than 120 percent of it.

Dadiet’s American agent, David Bauman, told his client he had the chance to go to the Knicks in the first round, but it could require a concession. The rookie scale determined that the No. 25 pick could make as much as $2.7 million in 2024-25. But whomever New York chose may have to settle for the low end of the rookie-scale range — in this case, $1.8 million. As Bauman laid out the finances to Dadiet, selections Nos. 20 and 21 came off the board. They didn’t have much time to decide. Dadiet never needed any.

Dadiet, from humble beginnings, wanted to play in New York. He had made only 40,000 Euro (nearly $44,000) playing in Germany the previous season. To him, $1.8 million didn’t sound like a sacrifice.

“Let’s do it,” Dadiet told Bauman.

Dadiet became the first first-rounder to sign for 80 percent of the rookie scale since 2019. At the time, the news seemed as if it were merely a niche piece of contractual trivia.

Months later, the headline has changed:

If Dadiet had signed a typical first-round contract, then the Knicks would not have Karl-Anthony Towns today — or, at least, they could not have acquired Towns the way they did.

The weekend before the preseason began, New York agreed to its second colossal transaction of the summer, sending Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Towns, a man the Knicks had kept in the corner of their sightline for years. But the trade hardly ended with those three people.

Inside a league littered with talk of aprons, salary-cap eccentricities and a longer list of don’ts than dos, the Knicks have mastered the minutiae. The construction of the Bridges trade, which was completed in July, hard-capped New York’s 2024-25 payroll at $188.9 million, a threshold called the second apron. After the Towns deal, the Knicks project to be just $335,000 short of that number once the regular season begins.

Had Dadiet taken $2.7 million instead of $1.8 million — which the Knicks made up for by paying Dadiet’s $850,000 buyout in Germany, a deposit that does not count against the cap — the Towns trade would have sent them above the second apron and thus not been allowed by the league.

The prospect of acquiring Towns did not become more than a dream until months after the draft, when New York realized starting center Mitchell Robinson would miss a large chunk of the season. The Knicks began canvassing the league to figure out the market for big men, landed on Towns and eventually included DiVincenzo, a longtime favorite of the Timberwolves and a player whom New York was reticent to give away. But while talks for Towns ramped up quickly, the Knicks fixated on a trade of this ilk for far longer than the week it took to negotiate it.

The Knicks went to bed on the evening of Sept. 28 with an agreement and a mission. They and Minnesota had outlined the major players involved in the trade: Towns, Randle and DiVincenzo. Now came the difficult part.

Throughout the process, the Timberwolves had spoken with three Knicks executives, according to league sources: president Leon Rose, senior vice president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas and vice president of basketball and strategic planning Brock Aller, whose title is more vernacularly referred to as “cap guy.” Rose, Towns’ former agent, and Rosas, who overlapped with Towns when Rosas was the Timberwolves’ president of basketball operations, handled bigger-picture discussions. Aller took care of the dirty work.

Leon Rose checks out a 76ers game at Wells Fargo Center. (Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)

The Knicks’ front office, ever since taking over the franchise in 2020, has become infatuated with marginal value, an obsession that emerged long before its creativity with Dadiet. The Knicks have prioritized contracts that descend year over year, handing one to Jalen Brunson and another to Robinson. If either of those players had signed deals that included conventional, annual raises, the team wouldn’t have had this room for Towns.

On the same night they drafted Dadiet, the Knicks moved their other pick out of the first round. The following afternoon, they traded back up to choose Tyler Kolek, their target all along, in the second round. For years, they refused to part with their own first-round picks, clutching onto them in the trade for OG Anunoby and in salary dumps of the past, until they found their target this summer: Bridges, who required four unprotected firsts for the Brooklyn Nets to say yes.

The current CBA makes it difficult, though not impossible, for two teams both above the first apron, a payroll threshold set at $178.1 million for the 2024-25 season, to make trades with each other. Drift above that mark, and teams can’t take back more money than they send out. New York and Minnesota, high rollers who are each above the first apron, would need to involve a third team that could absorb millions.

The Knicks, who weren’t trading away as much money as they were acquiring, had to uncover that destination — and also figure out a way to conjure up money they didn’t have.

Players on their roster were either not eligible to be traded, too important to the team’s success or too cheap to include. Another regulation impeded their search: By rule, they could use only one player making the minimum to match salaries — and they were already sending one, Keita Bates-Diop, to Minnesota.

So they dipped into a strategy they had executed during the Bridges trade. Two front offices agreed on the players of significance; then the cap strategists went to work.

The original composition of the Bridges deal (Bojan Bogdanović and a trove of draft picks to the Nets for the do-everything wing) would have hurt the Knicks’ flexibility. They were taking in more money than they were sending out, which would have hard-capped them at the first apron, chopping off approximately $10 million of breathing room. But the Nets, who won’t be too expensive this season, didn’t mind limiting themselves at a payroll they would never touch anyway.

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The Knicks, meanwhile, could use Bird rights, which allow teams to exceed the salary cap to retain their free agents, often at higher salaries, to include someone who would rarely have received a guaranteed contract in July. By the end of the Bridges deal, the Knicks added a minimum player, Mamadi Diakite, and a sign-and-trade of Shake Milton, a rarely used guard who will make $2.9 million this season. New York added salary and thus evaded a hard cap at the first apron.

The Knicks lowered their bucket into an adjacent well in the Towns deal.

Three of their former players — Charlie Brown Jr., Duane Washington Jr. and DaQuan Jeffries — remained unsigned by NBA teams, which meant the Knicks still had their rights. They could sign-and-trade all three, though they would have to pay guys who are most often at the end of a bench more than the minimum.

But only technically.

Towns’ life, the Knicks’ core and the NBA’s gaudiest trade of the summer rested on the shoulders of a team in Serbia.

The calendar had flipped to October, and the Charlotte Hornets had become an intuitive option as the third team. Not only did they wield an exception large enough to absorb the salaries of Washington, Brown and Jeffries, but they also had the connections. Their new lead executive, Jeff Peterson, and Aller had a long-running relationship. The Knicks could sign-and-trade the trio to the Hornets, sending Charlotte the cash to cover their salaries and three second-round picks as a thank-you.

But another organization stood in the way.

Duane Washington had signed with Partizan in Belgrade earlier in the summer, but his European team had no interest in allowing the binge scorer out of his contract. Releasing Washington would mean him missing at least three EuroLeague games, including a key one against Real Madrid.

Partizan held, then boasted, all the leverage.

The team wanted Washington to pay $600,000 in a buyout with another condition, according to a league source. If the Hornets did not release him, allowing him to head back to Partizan within 48 hours, he would owe an additional $1.6 million payment.

Teams in the Knicks’ financial situation cannot match salaries by stacking minimums on top of each other, but New York already had a plan. To make the Towns deal work, it offered each of Washington, Brown and Jeffries $1 above the minimum. For Washington, that meant a guarantee of just under $2.2 million, which sounds great … until factoring in Partizan’s original proposed terms.

If Charlotte didn’t release Washington immediately, an event that would be out of his control, then Washington would have been paying to play this season. Aller, according to multiple league sources, would not budge above his initial offer, the minimum plus $1. Adding to the financials, the Knicks said they would not pay for any of Washington’s buyout, as they had with Dadiet, insisting they had other options if Washington couldn’t find a way out of his contract.

Of course, those options were not nearly as enticing as trading away a player who wasn’t even in the NBA, let alone on their team. So the Knicks waited, an activity that had become all too familiar.

According to league sources, Aller and assistant general manager Frank Zanin informed Brown, Washington and Jeffries in July that if they lingered on the open market, there was a slim chance New York could use them in sign-and-trades, which would get guys who usually spend the season scrapping for jobs guaranteed money. In doing so, the Knicks outlined a situation similar to the one that got them Towns.

Rose’s front office, with Aller and others behind him, has figured out how to turn these types of players into assets, no matter their talent level. While negotiating in the past with end-of-the-bench free agents, they have argued that adding extra non-guaranteed seasons to a contract, normally thought of as a team-friendly construct only, could actually be helpful to the player too. Yes, that player would put himself at the mercy of the organization, but the Knicks could also eventually use him in an offseason trade, which would require guaranteeing his contract in the process.

Unlike Brown and Jeffries, Washington did not wait, receiving an offer from Partizan that was too enticing to pass up. With the Towns trade gaining strength, Washington had a chance to double dip — and not just because he wanted the extra dough. He believed a stint in Charlotte could be a Hail Mary, an off-chance to stick on an NBA roster if he impressed.

Duane Washington Jr. surveys the court during his time with the Suns in 2023. (Joe Camporeale / USA Today)

Eventually, Partizan changed its terms. Washington paid the $600,000 buyout along with additional fees for every day he was off the team until returning. He played in one game for the Hornets before they waived him Wednesday, a week after the Towns trade became official, and intends to re-sign with Partizan again, a league source said.

The week of chaos will net him six figures, hardly chump change for a 24-year-old who spent last season in the G League.

For all the justified discussion about how this new CBA could hurt the NBA’s middle class, it’s proven to be a joy for players like Washington. He made extra money, even if it did take a series of popped blood vessels to get it done. Jeffries and Brown are in similar situations. None of those three has ever had their contracts guaranteed before a season begins.

Also better off is Milton, whom the Detroit Pistons released last season before he signed with New York only to ride the bench, and Diakite, whose minimum salary the Knicks had to guarantee to top off the Bridges deal.

Rose and company are still playing the salary-cap game. The Knicks employ 12 players on guaranteed contracts and, by league rule, will have to keep at least two more into the regular season. Training camp invitee Landry Shamet will likely remain, league sources said. The other spot, because the team is up against the hard cap, will have to go to a rookie on a minimum salary.

New York has treaded so close to the second apron that most training camp invitees can’t even practice, let alone play in games. If they are on Exhibit 10 deals, which allow the Knicks to keep their G League rights after releasing them, and they get hurt during team activities, their contracts become guaranteed, which would throw off the financials.

There was a time when the Knicks’ target was blurry. They wanted to trade for the first star in the door, then realized they already had one in Brunson. They pushed hard for Donovan Mitchell a couple of years ago but bowed out once the price grew too expensive. Negotiations to trade for other stars never gained much traction.

Until the deal for Bridges. And then, for Towns.

Throughout one summer, the Knicks locked in a long-term core, all because the planning began years earlier.

Required Reading

(Top photo of Karl-Anthony Towns: Evan Bernstein  /Getty Images)