No. 2: New York Knicks trade for Giannis
The New York Knicks have to be tired of making blockbuster trades at this point, right?
There was the OG Anunoby deal on New Year's Eve. Then came the Mikal Bridges deal that wiped out their war chest of draft picks. Not done yet, Leon Rose and the front office then addressed their need at center by trading Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo for Karl-Anthony Towns.
Marc Stein's reporting is that the Knicks are not done, or at least that they are open to making another move. Because Towns is under contract for the maximum amount for the foreseeable future, it gives them the ability to use him as the centerpiece of another trade for a big-time star. That's a bold revelation for a team that just moved on from a beloved franchise star in Randle and a sharpshooter on a bargain contract in DiVincenzo for a player who may have just been a placeholder.
Smart front offices don't get emotionally attached to players, so the fact that the Knicks are viewing Towns as both a player and an asset makes sense - but it would be a cold move to flip him again and force him to move from New York to Milwaukee. And more so, such a trade would assume that the Bucks are even open to a trade with Towns as the main event.
They can't be significantly incentivized to like Towns, either, as the Knicks are nearly out of trade assets. They have just one first-round pick available to trade this season, a protected Washington Wizards pick that will likely just become two seconds down the line. That means the Knicks have to find a way to staple on some young players as well, further depleting their bench and their pipeline.
The other difficulty is that as a second tax apron team, the Bucks cannot take back more salary than they send out, but the Knicks are so close to their own hard cap that they are literally counting pennies. Any deal would require a third team to get involved.
Yet it's not even as simple as the Towns - Randle - DiVincenzo trade was, finding a team in Charlotte to take some of the excess money in the deal. Now that the season has begun they cannot just sign-and-trade players to bump up the salary matching, and they don't have any money on the books they can afford to trade away.
The Bucks, on the other hand, would love to get off of some money, but as a second-apron team they can only trade one player out at a time. The solution, then, is to find a way for Milwaukee to offload so much salary they dip beneath the second apron. Finding one team to take all of that on would be quite difficult, so instead, the Knicks have to find two.
Here is what such a 4-team trade could look like:
Milwaukee Bucks receive: Karl-Anthony Towns, Tyler Kolek, Jericho Sims, Pacome Dadiet, 2025 protected first (WAS), three second-round picks
New York Knicks receive: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Delon Wright
Toronto Raptors receive: Pat Connaughton, two second-round picks
Chicago Bulls receive: MarJon Beauchamp
The Toronto Raptors are given two second-round picks to add the salary of Pat Connaughton. He gives them a body at forward and if he rehabilitates his value they could trade him again in the offseason. Toronto has some space under the tax line for this season and is not a cap space team for next year, so this isn't unreasonable for them.
The Chicago Bulls get to enter the deal and send a second-round pick to take a flier on Beauchamp, who still has a lot of fans around the league. They need athletic forwards in the biggest way, so if Beauchamp can rebound in a second home it would be worth the cost.
The Knicks, of course, get to add an MVP in Giannis Antetokounmpo to pair with Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart. Delon Wright and Miles McBride would be the backup backcourt, while Matt Ryan, Precious Achiuwa and Mitchell Robinson would fill out the frontcourt. The Knicks would be extremely thin, but that's essentially the reality right now and Antetokounmpo would significantly raise their ceiling.
The Milwaukee Bucks can lean into an offense-first approach with Damian Lillard and Karl-Anthony Towns, perhaps flipping Brook Lopez and retooling the roster around Dame and KAT. They could also explore Damian Lillard trades and tear the entire thing down, with Towns as the centerpiece of a new build. Jericho Sims is a raw center prospect, and Kolek and Dadiet are rookies so they will be inexpensive for a long time.
It's a complicated trade, and seems wild to even contemplate so soon after the initial Karl-Anthony Towns trade, but there is a way to make it happen that isn't so unrealistic as to only live in dreams.