The New York Knicks are thrilled with having acquired Karl-Anthony Towns, but that doesn’t mean the Towns-era Knicks are going to be a success.
Chemistry isn’t guaranteed, and the Knicks moved on from the stellar chemistry of their 2023-24 iteration with the confidence that acquiring Towns would lead to bigger and better things.
Towns isn’t exactly a proven winner. Given how unforgiving New York can be for players that don’t produce, Towns is on thinner ice than he may realize.
What if it simply ends up being a bad fit?
Speaking of bad fits, there’s no telling whether the superstar trio in Phoenix of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal is ever going to smooth itself out. Could the Suns and Knicks become trading partners to help fix each other’s chemistry?
Booker and Towns are making the same amount of money this season ($49.2 million), so a 1-for-1 swap would work.
It might seem unfathomable that Phoenix would trade the 27-year-old Booker (who turns 28 on October 30), but Beal is untradeable and Durant is, well, one of the greatest players ever and still very much producing.
The Suns could stand to balance out (and improve) their roster by acquiring Towns, moving Jusuf Nurkic into a bench big role (that he’d excel at), and letting Durant and Beal go wild without having to worry about sharing the ball with a third wing.
On the New York side of the deal, acquiring Booker would finally give the Knicks the stud offensive wing they’ve been longing for forever. Booker and Brunson would complement each other tremendously, and if Mitchell Robinson and the much-improved Jericho Sims struggle to stay healthy, the Knicks could pick up some big man help for cheap on the free agent market.
Let’s face it, a Brunson-Booker pairing is far more blockbuster than a Brunson-Towns duo.
If the Phoenix trio struggles out of the gate once again, don’t rule out this trade as a possibility.
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