Being traded is one of the hardest things a player in the NBA can go through. It’s almost like the team sends a sign, saying, “We don’t want you anymore.” Star players are less likely to go through it than role players, but every so often, a league-shaking trade deal goes through. The Knicks’ acquisition of Karl Anthony-Towns is such a trade.
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Trading a player throws their personal life in jeopardy. They need to relocate their lives, and that usually means uprooting their families to move across the country. In this context, KAT spoke about the move and the subsequent chaos in his life on The Roommates Pod with his new teammates, Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart.
Hart, who is by no means a star, asked Towns if he was homeless. A bit of a surprising question, but he meant to enquire whether the big man had a place of his own in New York yet. Before he could get an answer, Brunson had to stifle a laugh.
“You never been traded, bro, you don’t know,” said Hart to Brunson after he heard the laugh. And he’s right too. Of the three players in the episode, Hart’s been traded thrice in his career. Towns has just been traded for the first time. Though Brunson started his career with the Mavericks, he signed with the Knicks in free agency, so he technically hasn’t gone through the pain of being traded.
He did, however, defend himself by saying he’s been through trades before, but not as a player. He used Hart’s son to explain what he went through. Brunson, whose father played in the NBA from 1997 to 2006, changed teams 10 times in his career. Jalen said he understood what being traded was like because of his father’s experiences.
KAT’s first-ever trade
After being drafted #1 overall in 2015 by the Timberwolves, he spent 9 years making a name for himself as their franchise player. However, Anthony Edwards’ arrival in 2020 jeopardized things for KAT, as he started to take over the franchise player mantle.
KAT’s trade was a necessary one for the Wolves, but it was a hard pill to swallow for him. It’s already been difficult to adjust to his new schedule, and he mentioned as much on the podcast, saying, “I had mostly the weekend to get my life together just to figure out what I was gonna do.”
Looking back at how the trade unfolded, it’s easy to see why. The trade was announced on Friday, the 27th of September. The Wolves were scheduled to have a team dinner on Sunday, the 29th before their media day duties started on the 30th of September.
The trade meant that Towns didn’t participate in the early duties, as the deal was still being finalized, and the Knicks players couldn’t discuss the trade with the media, owing to the final kinks getting sorted out of the deal.
Now that the dust has settled and preseason has commenced, KAT has had time to adjust to his new team, but the journey is just beginning for the Dominican center.
