The Toronto Raptors do not appear ready to trade veteran center Jakob Poeltl. But if and when they ever did decide to make such a move, it would have been nice for teams to be waiting to make an offer.
One such team is now off the market: the New York Knicks. After the news broke that center Mitchell Robinson was going to miss multiple months of the season rehabbing from surgery, it seemed like they may be desperate enough for a proven center option to make the Raptors an offer that they could not refuse.
Instead, the Knicks looked further West and only a hair south, to the land o’ lakes. They pulled off a blockbuster of a trade on Friday night, bringing All-NBA big man Karl-Anthony Towns to New York to start at center, sending Julius Randle and “Nova Knick” Donte DiVincenzo to the Timberwolves alongside a first-round pick.
The Knicks and Timberwolves made a blockbuster trade
The Knicks saw a need and decided to address it in the biggest way possible, trading for a supermax player (and his contract) to give them an elite offensive center. The Knicks can now run two-man actions with Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns with the likes of OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges spacing the court and ready to attack a defense in rotation.
There are certainly defensive question marks for New York, which has had a traditional, paint-protecting center on the court for nearly every minute of head coach Tom Thibodeau’s tenure. Can Towns hold up on the back line? That’s a massive question that will need to be answered to determine whether the Knicks can challenge the Boston Celtics in the East.
Out West, the Timberwolves save a significant amoutn of luxury tax money in this deal, and open up greater flexibility for next season and beyond by moving off of Towns’ contract. DiVincenzo gives them a gunner to inject scoring punch into their bench, and Randle can approximate some of what Towns provided at the 4. It’s arguable whether they are “better” or “worse” on the court, but when you also save $40 million and get a first-round pick you make that kind of a deal.
Back to the Raptors, they have now lost the Knicks as a potential trade partner. That includes deals that sent Jakob Poeltl to the Knicks directly, but also other trades where they took back salary to facillitate a deal for the Knicks to get their center. They couldn’t even get involved on this trade, as the Charlotte Hornets beat them as the team to make the money work.
That closes the door on one center-needy team. New Orleans still looms as the obvious trade partner, with other teams like Houston, Memphis and Golden State perhaps still in the mix. The Raptors were inclined to keep Poeltl anyway, but this snuffs out one of the last real suitors to trigger a trade before next offseason.
As the Raptors improve in the Eastern Conference, they will now face a very different New York Knicks team, one that now hopes it can challenge for the crown — and one that very decidedly no longer has a hole at center.
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