The New York Knicks’ 2025-25 regular-season schedule is now available in full, and among the many important matchups fans should be circling, none may be more illuminating than the November 5 showdown at Madison Square Garden against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
This is not the first date between these squads since New York (basically) shipped out Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, a first-round pick (Joan Berginer), and two seconds to land Karl-Anthony Towns. It should, however, be DiVincenzo’s first active game at MSG following the trade. He missed last year's Knicks-Wolves bout with a toe injury, though he was in uniform for his and Randle’s preseason tribute video.
More importantly, this game is yet another measuring stick for New York’s direction. The 11th-hour blockbuster that rocked the NBA last September is more than a season old, and as much as some want to declare it a victory for the Knicks, there remains much to consider.
The Knicks still have Karl-Anthony Towns questions to answer
By any conceivable metric, Towns had an excellent first season on offense with the Knicks. He was rewarded with the third All-NBA selection of his career. Both he and the team nevertheless exited their trip to the Eastern Conference Finals facing a smattering of uncomfortable questions.
Towns and Jalen Brunson never coalesced into the unstoppable duo many projected. A huge chunk of New York’s games, including through the playoffs, saw them lead two separate existences. The blame for their disconnect has fallen on Tom Thibodeau. We will know for sure whether that’s accurate if Mike Brown can recalibrate the star pairing’s settings.
There is also the open question the Timberwolves themselves took nearly a decade to answer: Is Towns a 4, or is he a 5?
For pretty much all of last season, the Knicks decided he was their center. It didn’t take long upon Mitchell Robinson’s return for fans to plead with Thibs to run more dual-big setups, which he eventually did—just not until deeper into the postseason.
This question persists entering the upcoming campaign. The Knicks at first telegraphed that they liked the idea of bringing Guerschon Yabusele off the bench behind Towns and Robinson. We have learned in the weeks since that nothing’s technically decided, but if they believe KAT is best deployed alongside another big, it opens the entire trade up to re-litigation.
This Wolves-Knicks trade will be fascinating to track for year to come
Shifting Towns down to power forward, or even having him split reps at the 4 and 5, comes with consequences. He will take up, on average, 34.2 percent of the salary cap over the next three years. That is a ton of money to pay for a 7-footer who needs to be insulated on defense.
This is not to say the Knicks would be definitively better off having kept DiVincenzo and Randle, and re-signing the latter. Towns is more of an anomaly at his position than both…in theory. He loses some of that anomalous luster when he’s a 4.
If nothing else, the Wolves are paying DiVincenzo and Randle a combined $10.2 million less than Towns makes this season. That gap holds more significance in the years to come, as the Knicks grapple with the second apron, and its limitations.
All of this becomes moot if the Knicks make their first Finals since 1999, win a championship, or even use KAT as a vehicle to acquire Giannis Antetokounmpo. For the time being, though, this trade can be deemed neither success nor failure. Its true value, for better or worse, is still being determined.