The Knicks and Pacers meet in the playoffs for the ninth time Wednesday after taking a similar path few teams get to brag about.
Both successfully executed trades of their star players in which both sides won.
Before the Mavericks made the stunning move to trade Luka Dončić to the Lakers in February, the Knicks and Timberwolves participated in what was previously the biggest swap of the season with All-Stars and Kentucky alums Julius Randle and Karl-Anthony Towns switching teams in late September.
Now both the Knicks and Timberwolves find themselves in the conference finals. This will be the Knicks’ first appearance since 2000 and the second consecutive conference finals for the Wolves, a first for the franchise.
The Pacers understand where the Knicks and Timberwolves are coming from. Indiana landed star guard Tyrese Haliburton from the Kings in 2022 in a package that revolved around Domantas Sabonis.
All three conference finalists had different motivations in their trades. Towns was the star the Knicks had sought for years since hiring former super agent Leon Rose to be their team president in 2020. Rose was Towns’s agent when he entered the NBA in 2015, and Knicks owner Jim Dolan said he hired Rose specifically to help the team acquire star players.
Towns was one of the Timberwolves’ longest-tenured players, but his days with the franchise became numbered after he signed a four-year supermax extension worth $220 million in 2022. The small-market team with a reputation for avoiding the luxury tax couldn’t afford the duo of Towns and Anthony Edwards, especially after Edwards’s five-year, $244 million extension kicked in and overlapped with Towns’s contract.
By trading for Randle, the T-Wolves saved hundreds of millions of dollars in salary long-term and acquired a player who has given them a strong postseason with just a $31 million player option left on his contract.
Then there’s the Pacers, who benefited from the Kings having too much of a good thing. The Kings already had star point guard De’Aaron Fox when the team drafted Haliburton 10th overall in 2020. But the Kings found it difficult to have both young guards play together. As a result, they dealt Haliburton to Indiana at the 2022 deadline in a package for Sabonis, and the results are still on display.
The Pacers are in the conference finals for the second consecutive year, while Sabonis teamed with Fox to help the Kings end what was then the longest postseason drought of 17 years in 2023.
While both the Pacers and Knicks arrived at the conference finals by nailing the trades of their respective stars, it’ll be up to those stars to help them win the series. At least they got the right ones this time.
