Knicks suspend contract extension talks for Karl-Anthony Towns, Josh Hart ‘until later in the season’
The New York Knicks announced Friday that they are suspending all negotiations on contract extensions with eligible players — including Karl-Anthony Towns and Josh Hart, key starters on the team that won the NBA championship back in June — until “later in the season.”
“As an organization, our entire focus is on preparing for the upcoming season and delivering another year for our fans to be proud of,” a Knicks spokesperson said in a statement issued to multiplenewsoutlets on Friday. “As a result, we will not be negotiating contract extensions until later in the season and will remain solely focused on preparing for the start of the season.”
Towns, Hart, sixth man Miles “Deuce” McBride and reserve point guard Tyler Kolek are all eligible for extensions of their current contracts. Towns, who holds a $61 million player option for 2027-28 campaign, is eligible for an extension worth a maximum of $276 million over four years. Hart, whose deal includes a $22.4 million team option for 2027-28, can extend for up to $132 million over four years.
McBride, now entering the final year of the three-year, $13 million extension he signed in 2023, is slated to reach unrestricted free agency this summer. Kolek, a second-round pick out of Marquette in 2024, has a $2.5 million team option for 2027-28.
After spending the summer celebrating their remarkable domination of the Eastern Conference and five-game victory over the San Antonio Spurs in the 2026 NBA Finals, the honeymoon following the franchise’s first title in 53 years appeared to end on media day last month, when it became clear that a lack of progress in extension talks was a paramount concern for Towns, the All-Star center who played perhaps the best basketball of his life during the Knicks’ run to the championship, and Hart, whose relentlessness so often fueled New York’s best moments, heading into the new season.
Karl-Anthony Towns (left) and Josh Hart are two of four extension-eligible Knicks who will have to wait to negotiate their next deal. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Fanatics)Kevin Mazur via Getty Images
The deadline for the Knicks to reach extension agreements with all four eligible players doesn’t come until June 30, 2027 — meaning they can ink new deals at any point throughout this season. To do it in-season, though, the player must be on an expiring contract; this means that Towns would have to decline his player option for 2027-28, and the Knicks would have to decline their team options on Hart and Kolek.
For the players, though, the prospect of putting discussions on the back-burner rather than getting them squared away before the start of the season can represent a somewhat disquieting risk.
"You always want to get it done, kind of as soon as possible, obviously, because you don’t want that trickling into the season," Hart said on media day. "Because whenever there’s uncertainty, there’s gonna be a lot of questions, there’s gonna be a lot of rumors. At a human level, sometimes that can wear people down, and it can affect how you go out and handle business on a day-to-day basis, just some of that uncertainty."
Towns underscored his discomfort with that uncertainty before New York’s preseason opener against the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday.
"Simply put, I want to do something to keep the team together and can work with the Knicks and also values me," Towns told reporters. "And none of those things are close to happening."
Why those things aren’t close to happening — for Towns specifically, and for the other extension-eligible Knicks in general — likely relates to New York’s concerns about steering clear of the second apron in the years to come.
As it stands, New York has just under $226.7 million in salary committed on the books for the 2027-28 season, according to Spotrac — about $9.3 million below the projected second apron line for that season. That figure includes team options on Hart, Kolek and 2024 first-round pick Pacôme Dadiet, and does not include a new deal for McBride.
The second apron line is critical because, just four days after the Knicks beat the Spurs, owner James L. Dolan went on New York radio station WFAN and made it clear that he did not intend to approve an offseason spending plan that would increase the team’s total salary commitments for this season past that second apron threshold.
Dolan called the prospect of spending into the second apron something "that you’d have to be, you know, suicidal to do." Crossing that line not only imposes a higher tax rate on high-spending teams, but also strips away team-building and roster-management tools like access to salary-cap exceptions, the ability to aggregate players’ salaries in trades, the option of sending cash to another team to grease the skids on a swap, and the freedom to acquire players in sign-and-trade deals, among other restrictions.
Dolan’s radio-appearance edict reportedly "blindsided" the Knicks front office, which wanted to go over the second apron after patiently and meticulously building a championship roster. Instead, New York spent its summer maneuvering to stay below that $222 million line — and, in the process, lost backup center Mitchell Robinson, who<a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/nba-champion-mitchell-robinson-reportedly-agrees-to-3-year-474m-deal-with-celtics-153340
Source: sports.yahoo.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.