Would Knicks trade Karl-Anthony Towns for Kevin Durant? Connecting dots on popular rumor, plus who says no?

The Phoenix Suns tried to trade Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors at the deadline. They failed, but the attempt was seemingly enough to damage the relationship beyond repair. All of the reporting since has suggested that the Suns, who missed the 2025 postseason, are likely to trade Durant this summer. At the deadline, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that there was mutual interest between Durant and five teams. 

Two of them, the Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs, fit due to their deep pool of trade assets. The Miami Heat have a reputation for recruiting stars. The Minnesota Timberwolves employ Anthony Edwards, who idolized Durant growing up and played with him on Team USA last summer. Each made some measure of sense.

The surprising inclusion was a team that Durant famously spurned in 2019: the New York Knicks. Durant instead signed with the Brooklyn Nets. Knicks fans have publicly delighted in that team’s collapse. Durant has taken shots at them as well. “Fans expect players to join the Knicks because of their brand but players have grown up watching the Knicks suck and they aren’t cool anymore,” he said in 2019.

Well, the Knicks don’t suck anymore. They just came within six games of a championship, and they should theoretically appeal to Durant on several levels. We know he likes the city of New York because, well, he’s already gone there once. His agent, Rich Kleiman, is a longtime Knicks fan that has openly admitted that he wanted Durant in blue and orange in 2019. And the Eastern Conference is wide open with Jayson Tatum injured. If Durant’s goal is to get back to the Finals, he’ll have a far easier time doing so if he manages to escape the Western Conference.

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The obvious question here is what New York would have to give up to get him. The defensively bereft Suns would surely love role players like OG Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson, but the Knicks are thin and defensively limited as it is. The Suns just tried the whole “let’s be so good at offense that defense doesn’t matter” thing and it didn’t go well. New York isn’t breaking up its entire team for a soon-to-be 37-year-old former MVP. If the Knicks are going to do this, they would have to do it in such a way that didn’t disturb the bulk of their roster.

And that’s where Karl-Anthony Towns comes in.

So… KAT for KD?

Towns’ contract matches Durant’s almost exactly, with New York’s center coming in less than $2 million below Phoenix’s forward. That’s an easy enough problem to solve. The Knicks would have to hard-cap themselves at the second apron by doing so, but they could easily toss another minor salary over to a third team to make the math work. 

In player terms, this would essentially be a one-for-one trade. If Phoenix insisted on extra value, the Knicks have a few useful sweeteners. The 2026 Washington first-round pick they control is protected in such a way that it will almost certainly not convey, but it will still lead to second-round picks from the Wizards in 2026 and 2027. Those are valuable picks. The Knicks can also dangle first-round swap rights in 2026 and 2030. These are especially important to Phoenix, particularly, because they’ve already given away swaps in those years several times over. They are currently slated to get the worst first-round pick between themselves, the Wizards, the Magic, the Grizzlies and the Hornets next season. In 2030, it’s themselves, the Wizards and the Grizzlies. Just by virtue of the number of picks involved, they are almost guaranteed to have bad picks in those years, so having the ability to swap in those years is potentially pretty valuable.

So we can pretty easily construct a viable trade here, and we can get to a motive pretty easily as well. The Knicks traded for Towns, at least in part, to ride out Mitchell Robinson’s injury a season ago. They’ve now done so, and therefore need a center on a max contract less than they did last fall. Reporting from The Athletic suggests that the team grew frustrated with Towns defensively, which isn’t surprising given his career-long vulnerabilities. 

The Knicks struggled to defend with both Towns and Jalen Brunson on the floor in both the regular season (41st percentile by points per possession, according to Cleaning the Glass) and the playoffs (31st). There are those who would argue that defending at a championship level simply is not possible with liabilities at both point guard and center. It just makes mismatch-hunting too easy for opponents. A trade like this would solve that problem for the Knicks.

It would also, at least in the short term, theoretically help the Suns appease the most important player in their own building. By all accounts, Devin Booker is comfortable in Phoenix. He has reportedly been involved with the team’s ongoing coaching search, and Suns owner Mat Ishbia has shot down any notions of trading him this offseason. But, well, this is the 21st century NBA. We know stars can get antsy. We don’t know how Booker will feel in a year if the Suns trade Durant for role players and their circumstances don’t materially improve.

Towns is insulation against a future Booker trade request because the two are close friends and college teammates. In a 2019 SLAM Magazine cover story, Booker, Towns and D’Angelo Russell vowed to play together one day. Well, Russell is a free agent this summer. Now might be the time to make their dream come true.

Put all of this together and you have what is quickly becoming the most popular fake trade of the offseason. There has not yet been direct reporting that the Knicks would consider trading Towns, specifically, to get Durant, but there are dots here that are reasonably easy to connect. So given the magnitude of such a trade, let’s break down the implications for both sides and figure out who, if either, would say no to this trade.

The deal for the Knicks

We need to get something established quickly. There’s an idea floating around that merely having a healthy Robinson means that New York is set at center with or without Towns. That is emphatically not true. Robinson has played 48 regular-season games over the past two seasons. He has missed nearly as many games over the past five seasons (188) as he has played (21), and even within those games, he’s barely stayed on the floor more than half of the available minutes (25.5). Robinson is not Nikola Jokić. He cannot be depended upon for 35 minutes and 75 games. The Knicks have to plan around the idea that he will not only miss games, but should be playing closer to 25 minutes per night than 35 per night. That’s why they signed Isaiah Hartenstein in 2022. They know they need a second starting-caliber center on their roster.

So how do they get one? This is where things get complicated. They can’t trade Anunoby. He’s too important defensively. They aren’t trading Bridges for 30 cents on the dollar relative to what they paid. Maybe they could get lucky in free agency, but with Durant’s extra money, accessing even the taxpayer mid-level exception would be difficult. That means they’re either hoping for an Ariel Hukporti breakout or gambling with minimum contracts. Neither option is all that appealing, so in all likelihood, they’d have to dangle Josh Hart in a trade. 

They could find someone viable with Hart’s $19.4 million salary slot, but even if Hart is better as a bench player, the Knicks would be losing a lot without him. He’s an essential transition player, and his offensive rebounding is central to their identity. Pull him from the equation and a lot of that classic, Tom Thibodeau grit disappears. So does one of their only sources of unpredictability. His combination of effort, ball-handling and passing creates winning plays out of thin air. Their value can’t be quantified, but they can be felt. The Knicks are a blander team without Josh Hart.

But Hart’s shooting woes were a major offensive problem for last year’s team. Opponents hid their centers on him to serve as extra rim-protection. Nobody’s doing that to Durant. New York’s offensive formula changes quite a bit with him, but ultimately in beneficial ways.

Is Durant still an MVP-caliber offensive player? No. In fact, he probably wasn’t a top-10 offensive player in the NBA last season. It’s just hard for any player to get there with his profile. His rim and free-throw rates have predictably plummeted with age, and he doesn’t offer too much as a playmaker. He’s mostly a jump-shooter at this stage, but remember, he’s a Kevin Durant-level jump-shooter. That’s still enormously valuable offensive player provided he exists in the right ecosystem.

The Knicks ranked fifth in the NBA in points in the paint last season thanks in large part to Towns. Those days would be over with Durant. In a sense, the Knicks would be living out a far more well-rounded version of Phoenix’s offensive vision. Neither Durant nor Brunson generate a ton of rim gravity (though Brunson provides more of it than Devin Booker), but their shotmaking would be so good they could theoretically overcome it. 

Robinson is the ideal pick-and-roll center for such an offense because he generates gravity as both a lob threat and a rebounder. Anunoby and Bridges are too capable on the ball for defenses to ever double Brunson or Durant. This offense would live off of hard jump shots, but it would make so many of them that it almost wouldn’t matter provided they improved their shot diet. The Knicks ranked 28th in 3-point attempt rate last season. 

For this to work, they’d have to be at least average and probably higher. That’s doable with their pick-and-roll game unlocked by the absence of the non-shooting Hart on the wing. In truth, this is probably a better playoff offense than a regular-season unit. It would miss out on a lot of the easier interior and transition points Towns and Hart provide. But Brunson and Durant are as close to defense-proof as playoff shotmakers get.

So that’s the offense. The defense is more complicated without knowing who New York’s second center would be. In short, it would be better as long as that second center was average or better. Brunson has functioned within good defenses before. The Knicks ranked ninth in the 2023-24 season when Hartenstein was his center.

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Durant, at his peak, was a sorely underrated defender. He’s declined with age. He’s still useful as a help-defender and secondary rim-protector, but he can’t take difficult on-ball assignments anymore. He wouldn’t need to next to Anunoby and Bridges. He could just fit in, and if you think of him as replacing Hart in the starting lineup in this scenario, the Knicks suddenly gain seven or eight inches of height and wingspan. That’s meaningful in itself. It allows Brunson to play in lineups with the size to support him, and it removes an obvious hunting spot from the equation. That might lead to Brunson getting hunted more, and thus tiring him out for offense, but of course, having Durant mitigates that problem a fair bit.

All in all, the Durant version of the Knicks is probably better, at least next season, than the Towns version. We say probably, though, because we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room here. Durant is going to be 37 next season. He has an extensive injury history. He’s also probably going to need a contract extension after this. At best, the Knicks are probably shaving a few years off of their window. At worst, they’re shutting it entirely.

Is that risk worth the reward an upgrade like this promises? That depends on how you’d define success. The Knicks came within six games of the title this season. On paper, that is a successful season. Given the state of the Eastern Conference, it’s not hard to imagine them replicating that feat and potentially even beating Indiana in a rematch if everything goes right. There’s something to be said for a relatively comfortable 50-to-55 wins. It gives you a chance. Maybe you aren’t the best team, but you’re there at the end. If the wrong guy twists and ankle, or if you happen to get hot from deep for a few games, the door opens.

But if New York’s goal is to plausibly build the best team in the NBA, no, that isn’t happening as currently constructed. If the healthy Knicks and the healthy Thunder had met in the 2025 NBA Finals, the Thunder would have won that series comfortably. If the Knicks want to put themselves in a position to compete with teams like the Thunder on even footing, it has to come through some sort of high-risk, high-reward transaction. Maybe that’s a coaching change. Maybe that’s through another blockbuster we aren’t seeing right now. But acquiring a top-15 player in NBA history and hoping he has at least one more peak season in him would certainly qualify.

The deal for the Suns

First question: how are the Suns getting D’Angelo Russell? Phoenix is far above the second apron for the time being. The Suns can duck below it by declining their team option on Vasilije Micić and waiving the non-guaranteed salary of Cody Martin, but not enough to even use the taxpayer mid-level exception. Realistically, they’d only have a minimum salary to offer.

Is Russell gettable for the minimum? The answer is probably no, but it’s more realistic than you’d think given the current free-agent climate. Only one team has cap space, and it’s his current employer: the Nets. Win-now teams aren’t giving him the mid-level exception. He’s too vulnerable defensively. His free-agent market has been tepid in recent years. Tyus Jones saw last season how hard it can be for point guards perceived as backups to get paid. He took a minimum deal in Phoenix to start and try to boost his value. Perhaps Russell could do the same. It would probably depend on what Brooklyn does. The Nets will have to spend just to reach the salary floor. There’s a world in which he’s retained for that purpose.

The Nets could try to pull a version of what the Warriors did years ago: sign him just to hold him hostage in a trade. Golden State knew it could get Minnesota to overpay for him at the following trade deadline, and perhaps Brooklyn could try that in reverse, signing him to a one-year deal at a salary that makes him acquirable using one of Phoenix’s role players and then extorting what meager draft assets the Suns still have in a midseason deal. Ultimately we can’t assume Russell is coming on board, but it would certainly be on the table.

It’s actually pretty easy to envision Phoenix getting better on offense with Towns in Durant’s place purely for the sake of diversity. The Durant-Booker fit was doomed by their similarity. Only the Celtics scored fewer paint points than the Suns last season. Turning one of your two mid-range scorers into someone who can get to the basket makes a lot of sense. There’s also just the fact that Phoenix was playing bad players at center all year. The Suns have more perimeter talent than they do big men. Turning Durant into Towns makes it easier to get better players on the court, and perhaps milk some value out of Beal’s awful contract. This team would have a lot of collective shooting. It doesn’t need much of a rim presence to soar, it just can’t be nonexistent as it was last year.

Towns is a mess on defense. So is every other big man Phoenix used last year. But having a center that can shoot 3s makes it easier to hide defenders in other lineup slots. The Knicks ranked fifth on offense last season despite Hart’s poor shooting. If Phoenix needs to play, say, Ryan Dunn to survive on defense, Towns makes that easier from a spacing perspective. Booker isn’t Brunson. He’s not a great defender, but he’s bigger and more versatile. He doesn’t get hunted in the same way. The Suns would not be a great or even a good defense with this deal, but they wouldn’t come with the same inherent limitations that the Brunson-Towns duo dealt with since Booker isn’t an outright liability.

Does this trade make the Suns the contender Ishbia wants them to be? Probably not, especially in a loaded Western Conference. More likely, it’s a 45-win team, good enough to land somewhere in the Play-In Tournament and lose shortly afterward. That isn’t something most teams, especially ones as expensive as the Suns, aspire towards.

But in this context, it’s a potentially worthwhile one for the Suns. There is no Durant trade out there that’s going to fix everything wrong with this team. Get that idea out of your head. It isn’t happening. But making a trade that appeases Booker and gets Phoenix back to respectability at least buys them some time. They can slowly sort out the rest of the roster from there, hopefully finding role players that work over the course of a few years and then making a bigger push towards the end of Booker’s prime. Maybe they open up some cap flexibility when Beal’s deal expires. Maybe they nail one or two draft picks or trades and take an unexpected step forward.

Is it an ideal solution? No. There just isn’t one here. In truth, Phoenix should probably trade Booker, but for now, such a move is off of the table, so they have to give themselves time to address all of their problems. That’s not time they’ll have if they keep a 37-year-old, but if they trade that 37-year-old for rookies and draft picks, they probably won’t be able to take advantage of those assets before Booker gets fed up with losing. This is a survival trade, a chance for them to figure things out over time in a way that gives both the fan base and the All-Star here a bit of hope. All things considered, they could do a lot worse.

Who says no?

I suspect the Knicks would probably lean no on this trade, but would not dismiss it outright. Inertia is one of the most powerful forces in basketball. Teams rarely want to take the nuclear option without considering smaller ones first. Leon Rose was Towns’ agent for years before he took over the Knicks. This is a player he presumably believes in. He’s not going to trade him lightly. He’s going to explore every possible option for making his fit with Brunson work. That likely includes lineup changes, smaller roster changes, and yes, even a possible coaching change before it includes dealing him. That doesn’t mean a Towns trade is off of the table. It just means it won’t happen unless the Knicks truly believe it is their only choice.

The situation is more complicated on Phoenix’s end. It depends on what they’re offered for Durant, and what they’re offered for Durant probably depends on what happens to Giannis Antetokounmpo. Say Houston is the team most eager to make Phoenix a sizable offer. Doesn’t really matter if they cash in their chips for the Greek Freak, does it? Phoenix’s answer is ultimately going to be market-dependent.

Still, if the Suns were truly presented this trade, I think they would lean toward saying yes. Think about the owner we’re dealing with here. Ishbia traded for Durant mere days after taking over the team and Beal only a few months later. This is someone who prioritizes star power and wants to win now. Even if a trade involving multiple players and draft picks made more sense, it’s just not the sort of move his history suggests he’d prefer. And of course, moves of this magnitude don’t happen without player input. If Booker got wind of this possibility, he’d probably push for it, and once a star pushes for a move, it’s hard not to make it.

Of course, that player input goes in both directions. Durant also has to want this deal for it to happen. That’s leverage his expiring contract affords him, and it’s where this gets trickier. Remember Draymond Green calling him from the parking lot after Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals? Or the All-Star Game scheming with Kyrie Irving? When Durant changes teams, it tends to start with him back channeling with a star he might like to play with.

Right now, it’s entirely possible that Durant is talking with some player, or players, he’d be interested in playing with. And when the time comes for Phoenix to truly dig into trade ideas, he might have already made up his mind on another team. If he does? The Knicks are probably out of luck unless they’re willing to trade for an unhappy star on an expiring deal. That’s how the NBA often works at this level. It takes three to tango. So even if the Knicks and Suns are on board, Durant would have to be as well. But if he is? This trade makes plenty of sense for all parties involved.