Knicks are learning what Timberwolves always knew about Karl-Anthony Towns

Less than two seasons into Karl-Anthony Towns’ Big Apple tenure, the New York Knicks now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, why the Minnesota Timberwolves traded him in the first place: He can’t be the second-best player or starting center on a championship hopeful, and definitely isn’t worth his contract.

The front office now appears to be acting accordingly. As Steve Popper of Newsday reports, the Knicks are currently shopping their big man to multiple teams, a list that includes the Charlotte Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies, and Orlando Magic.

Few saw this development coming at the start of the season, when New York was rolling. Flipping Towns in a blockbuster for Giannis Antetokounmpo is one thing. Shopping him seemingly haphazardly is altogether different. 

Yet, when you consider how Towns even got here, onto the Knicks, it actually makes perfect sense.

The Timberwolves came to the same Karl-Anthony Towns realization

Lest you think this is too harsh, remember the writing was on the wall for Towns before he ever left the Wolves. They felt compelled to trade for a generational Defensive Player of the Year mainstay, in Rudy Gobert, just to insulate him on the less glamorous end. 

Two years after that, on the heels of a Western Conference Finals appearance, just one season into Towns’ $220.4 million supermax deal, Minnesota shipped him to New York for Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, and a first-round pick that became Joan Beringer. The move is largely billed as a win-win, but it’s starting to look worse for the Knicks.

Consolidating so much of your payroll into a stretch center who’s reluctant to take threes and may not be able to play his best position in the postseason isn’t just less than ideal. It's a competitive death sentence. 

The Knicks know it, too. That is why they have dabbled in dual-big frontcourts with KAT and Mitchell Robinson. This in some ways is an admission of error by itself. Robinson shouldn’t be so important to a team with another seven-footer earning close to 35 percent of the salary cap. 

The Knicks can’t count on Karl-Anthony Towns changing

Towns’ tenure is shaping up to be even worse now as the Knicks struggle to play with any semblance of pride. He is far from the team’s only problem, but his offensive decline is a killer, and his overall buy-in is worse. 

Nobody wants to hear about how this team is actually mega different from last year’s squad because…it let Cam Payne go. To be fair, Towns has a point…when it comes to Payne’s impact on Towns himself:

Still, saying something like that, after laying an egg against the injury-decimated Dallas Mavericks, takes a special kind of ignorance. 

Whether New York acts on the latest rumors will be a matter of course. The team has descended into change-for-change’s-sake territory, but he is slogging through perhaps the worst season of his career. Anyone who believes he can be the centerpiece in a blockbuster deal is fooling themselves. He might need to stay put, not because it’s the right answer, but because it’s the only option.

Regardless, for all the Knicks are doing wrong, for as much as Mike Brown has failed to build the necessary rapport with his big man, this team’s biggest issue is also its most expensive, and one the Timberwolves saw coming from roughly 1,500 miles away: Towns the basketball player is deeply flawed and can't be one of your two most important stars, and that isn’t going to change.