Karl-Anthony Towns Eligible For Insane Extension; Are Knicks Interested?

Karl-Anthony Towns had an excellent first year with the New York Knicks, averaging 24.4 points per game and finishing second in the NBA with 12.8 rebounds a night. He was named to the All-NBA Third Team. He's now eligible for an extension, but at the price tag that it would take, Stefan Bondy of The New York Post says we shouldn't hold our breath.

The crickets around any Karl-Anthony Towns-Knicks extension talks shouldn’t be surprising... The lack of attention to (his) situation is understandable after crunching the numbers.

Towns is eligible for a two-year, $150 MILLION extension. Wait, what? $75 Mill a year? As Bondy said, it's not surprising that the Knicks aren't jumping at that, no matter how good KAT was for them last season.

His current deal runs another two years, with a third year as a player option, at $53M this coming season, $57M for 2026-27, and the option for $61M for '27-'28. The supermax extension was signed with his previous team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, in the summer of 2022, but only kicked in this past year with the Knicks after they acquired him last October in a blockbuster deal.

Bondy notes (h/t Sam Amico) that there's no indication that talks on this new potential $150M extension have begun. October 20th is the deadline for signing it.

It's that second apron that has teams worried about blowing over the luxury tax by such large amounts. It places onerous restrictions on a teams' ability to make moves. The Boston Celtics, as an example, were forced to trade off two key pieces of their 2024 championship team this summer (Kristaps Porzingis & Jrue Holiday) in order to get out from under the dreaded second apron.

Bondy indicates that the likeliest scenario is that Towns plays out the final two years of his current deal, and maybe even picks up the player option on '27-'28.

The Knicks finished third in the Eastern Conference at 51-31 last season, then lost in the Conference Finals to the Indiana Pacers.