Knicks Face Challenge Retaining Core as Karl-Anthony Towns Nears Contract End

The New York Knicks achieved near-perfect basketball harmony on their way to the 2026 championship. Everyone sacrificed. Everyone played the role the team needed them to play. The vibes, simultaneously immeasurable and obvious to anyone who watched for even a second, were immaculate.

This often happens on the way to championships, but it is considerably harder to maintain after they've been won.

It only took days for the first true concerns to arise in New York . Knicks owner James Dolan declared the idea of going into the second apron to be "suicidal," and sure enough, key backup Mitchell Robinson , the only homegrown player in New York's entire championship rotation, was allowed to leave for the Boston Celtics . This was a heavy loss, but not necessarily a critical one. Andre Drummond was signed as a replacement , and the Knicks may pursue a better one down the line . There's room for internal growth. If absolutely necessary, OG Anunoby can probably play some center. Losing Robinson does not need to be a death knell.

The starters are where that line gets drawn. Four of them are coming up on new contracts, and the first known to begin negotiations has thus far resisted New York's offers. According to ESPN , talks between the Knicks and Karl-Anthony Towns have "stagnated." Talks are reportedly cordial, but a deal is unlikely before training camp. So with negotiations ongoing, let's dive into New York's finances and why this standoff is potentially so important to the Knicks.

Knicks, Karl-Anthony Towns extension talks reportedly have stalled: What it means as New York aims to repeat Robby Kalland

What is Towns worth, and what are the Knicks offering?

Towns, 30, has two years left on a supermax extension he signed with the Minnesota Timberwolves , but the last of those two years, the 2027-28 season, comes with a player option. This means Towns has the option to opt out and become a free agent before a summer when several teams are expected to have significant cap space.

Against the projected $176 million cap, other teams would be able to offer Towns a four-year deal worth almost $265 million if he indeed opted out. If this season plays out at all similarly to last year, Towns would probably command offers in that range. What else are teams like the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers doing with their money? Towns just proved that he is perhaps the single center in all of basketball best-equipped to challenge Victor Wembanyama , the presumed best player in the NBA moving forward. His market will be substantial.

Karl-Anthony Towns NY • C • #32

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Any time between now and June 30, the Knicks can extend Towns for up to four seasons for roughly $277 million. According to SNY , the Knicks have talked to Towns about deals that start in the $45-50 million range, which would represent a meaningful discount. A deal like this would fall roughly in line with where star bigs in similar age ranges have landed, at least as a percentage of the cap goes.

Rudy Gobert , a former Towns teammate, is the easy comparison here. He had a player option for right around 30% of the cap for the 2025-26 season. In signing his extension with Minnesota, he declined that option and instead received a three-year deal that started him at around 22.6% of the cap. Were Towns to take a similar 7.5% percentage-of-the-cap dip, he'd start his new deal at $48.4 million, right around the range SNY projected.

Why is a discount for Towns so important to the Knicks?

Gobert's discount in Minnesota helped the Timberwolves squeeze Julius Randle and Naz Reid under the second apron. The Knicks are in a somewhat similar boat. In addition to Towns on his player option, the Knicks also have Josh Hart on a $22.4 million team option for the 2027-28 season. Before accounting for those two, the Knicks have around $93 million in second apron space with eight rostered players.

That sounds like plenty of money, but things start to get tight when you account for Towns and Hart, filling out the remainder of the roster and potentially re-signing key backup Miles McBride . If Towns and Hart both played the 2027-28 season on their options, New York would suddenly only have a bit less than $10 million below the second apron to sign at least four more players. That may not even be enough to keep McBride.

Ideally, the Knicks would want Towns to lower his 2027-28 salary by some meaningful amount in order to open up more room beneath the second apron. As was the case with Gobert, New York would hope that long-term security would be enough of a reward for Towns to get him to do so, though thus far it has not. The Knicks could potentially use a Hart extension in the same way, or, if Towns takes a big enough discount, they could use that extra flexibility to frontload a Hart deal to make it less onerous down the line. This would likely explain why we've heard little movement on the Hart front. The Knicks would probably prefer to know what they're paying Towns and structure Hart's next contract accordingly.

Of course, this isn't just a matter of ducking the second apron in the 2027-28 season. It's about keeping as much of this team together longer-term as possible, and the real cliff comes in the 2028-29 season. That's when player options for both Finals MVP Jalen Brunson and Finals hero OG Anunoby come up. The hope would surely be for both to get extended and retire in New York. The same goes for Towns. And Hart. And Mikal Bridges . All five are now Knicks icons. But paying all five their fair market value in the apron era gets tricky.

Inevitably, the Knicks will ask for discounts. They seemingly already have with Towns. They'll argue there's off-court value to being in New York and being Knicks icons, and that this group has several more years of contention ahead of them. Every player will evaluate the situation differently, but on paper, it's probably a tough sell.

The players just watched ownership refuse to go into the second apron to keep Robinson, so why is the responsibility of maintaining a seemingly very profitable contender solely on their shoulders?

The Brunson situation is another wrinkle here. He's already taken his discount , and it ultimately proved necessary for New York's championship. He needs to be made whole, and based on his productivity as a player, he deserves to be. At the same time, asking some players to give up money when others are paid appropriately can create uncomfortable locker-room dynamics. These are human beings, after all.

What happens next for the Knicks?

One way or another, it's hard to imagine the Knicks don't get a deal done with Towns. Even if other centers like him existed, the Knicks wouldn't have the assets or flexibility to get one. He and Brunson are irreplaceable. The questions here trickle down to everyone else, and they likely won't be addressed for at least a year. The Knicks aren't weakening their title defense by moving a starter prematurely.

Anunoby and Bridges have enough stylistic and physical similarities that the Knicks could theoretically move forward with just one of them. Hart, for a variety of reasons, would stand out as the starter most likely to move. He's the oldest of the five and will turn 32 this season. His playing style, as the worst shooter of the group, is most likely to decline with age. His place on the team long term -- more than Towns' -- probably depends on extending under team-friendly terms.

How closely are the Knicks holding to Dolan's anti-second apron edict? The worst impacts of crossing the line -- most notably having a future first-round pick drop to No. 30 -- are felt after three seasons above it. There might be a scenario in which the Knicks need to go above the second apron for a year before dipping back below it later. Of course, the obvious season in which to do it would have been this year, as the Knicks are defending a championship and this will be their last season before becoming a repeat taxpayer. The revamped repeater tax is enormously punitive to teams that approach the aprons, and that probably played some part in New York's hesitance to do so.

Going into the second apron just once still results in a frozen first-round pick. With most of New York's future draft capital going to Brooklyn, the Knicks likely want to be cautious about letting that happen. Their 2033 first-round pick is unlocked for possible trades this offseason. Their 2035 pick won't unlock for two more years, but at that point, they may need those picks to trade for a new starter to replace someone who's gotten too expensive.

A trick that other expensive teams have tried -- mostly unsuccessfully -- has been trading future picks for present ones. The Timberwolves did this to get Rob Dillingham in 2023. The pick didn't work out, but the strategy made sense. On a roster in which everyone else is about to get expensive, a big bet on a four-year rookie deal can be a worthwhile cost-control measure. Trading for a player who is already on a rookie deal can have the same effect on a shorter timeframe.

It's way too early for anyone in New York to panic. A Towns deal will almost certainly get done eventually, and the five starters from the championship team are all back for the title defense. But all of this is a reminder of what the 2023 CBA does to great teams. It's almost impossible to keep them together without sacrifices from some of the players.

Towns, for now, seemingly isn't willing to take the sort of haircut the Knicks want him to, and even if we don't quite know what that will mean in a year or two, most of the answers are probably discouraging for those hoping New York can defy the aprons and keep their five best players together indefinitely.

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_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/karl-anthony-towns-knicks-contract-negotiations/)._