The second apron is coming for the Knicks. Not this season, maybe not next season, but the apron is coming.
That may be best evidenced by the fact that contract extension negotiations between the Knicks and star center Karl-Anthony Towns have stalled, reports ESPN’s Shams Charania and Vincent Goodwill.
The sides have spent extensive time discussing a potential extension during the offseason, but there has been no movement lately in negotiations, sources said, as the Knicks stand to go for a repeat following their first NBA title in 53 years.
Towns is a championship center and now a New York legend, not to mention an All-Star and All-NBA big man at the peak of his game. He is extension eligible for up to four years and $276 million. Towns is under contract this season for $57 million and has a $61 million player option for 2027-28.
Towns wants an extension and the Knicks want to extend him, but reality is hitting New York hard: 2028-29 is when a Jalen Brunson extension would kick in — he took a discount last time but is eligible for and deserves a supermax deal now — plus a Josh Hart extension also would begin. That on top of an OG Anunoby extension that could, and likely would, begin that year. Remember, Knicks owner James Dolan said it would be “suicidal” for a team to be in the second apron and he didn’t want to do it (and that echoes what other owners have said).
What New York wants is Towns to take less per year — maybe $55 million a season? Maybe less? — for more guaranteed money across multiple years. Towns may not be interested in that steep a discount, as much as he loves New York and wants to finish his career there.
This is what NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the owners want: Congratulations on winning a championship, now break up that team. He covets NFL-style parity over all. Silver proudly touts the fact that the league has had eight different champions in the past eight years and said of the second apron, “It’s certainly not an unintended consequence” that teams are broken up. So we get Boston deciding it has to trade Jaylen Brown away — coming off a season when he was sixth in MVP voting — because they see it as the best path to building a contender around Jayson Tatum. We get Oklahoma City losing key role players — Lu Dort, Isaiah Joe, Aaron Wiggins — so they can keep the young stars they have together (with more cuts coming and key players lost the next couple of years). People around the league are already talking about how San Antonio will have to trade De’Aaron Fox at some point for financial reasons.
Fans hate seeing players like Brown, Dort and others that their team drafted and developed have to be traded (or, in the case of the Knicks, a team cleverly built through trades and free agency). Silver may think the system is working, but angering a generation of core fans for financial reasons is not a good business strategy. There is more of it to come, and it’s going to hit the Knicks hard. The aprons are going to be a sticking point come the next CBA negotiations — the players and fans hate them.
But for now, the Knicks are stuck trying to extend Towns and keep a championship roster together.
