Knicks suspend contract extension talks for Karl-Anthony Towns, Josh Hart 'until later in the season'

The New York Knicks announced Friday 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 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 multiple news outlets 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.

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 signed a three-year, $47.4 million deal with the Boston Celtics.

The Knicks don't have to stay below the second apron; in fact, it's reasonable to argue that, as a confirmed championship-level team squarely in the middle of its contending window, they are precisely the sort of team that can and should be willing to go above that line for at least one season. They are, as SNY's Ian Begley put it , "voluntarily limited" by Dolan's public and apparently ongoing insistence that he will not authorize such spending. Amid the ongoing rancor surrounding Towns' contract talks, Friday's statement pausing all extension negotiations suggests that the owner's tune isn't changing anytime soon.

It's unclear whether Dolan's "stay below the second apron" mandate will apply past this season, stretching out to 2027-28, 2028-29 and beyond. If it does, though, it becomes exceedingly difficult to envision a scenario in which the Knicks — who will also see Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby become extension-eligible next summer — keep together the core that just won the championship. The math essentially demands significant financial sacrifice, beyond even the cost savings that New York was able to realize when Brunson opted to extend a year ahead of free agency and when Anunoby and Mikal Bridges took slightly less than their maximum salaries in their respective re-ups.

Towns now finds himself at the center of that "sacrifice for the good of the roster vs. advocate to earn your market rate" conflict. The Knicks have reportedly offered Towns a four-year, $200 million extension — less than he got from the Timberwolves in 2022 and more than $75 million below his max. Towns clearly does not feel that offer accurately reflects the contributions he's made since arriving in New York before the start of the 2024-25 season.

Asked on Monday whether he felt he deserved to be rewarded for that level of achievement on his next deal, Towns told reporters : "No s***, Sherlock. I just won a championship. You'd think it was pretty easy. Unless you guys think I have something else to prove."

Whether Dolan, Knicks team president Leon Rose or someone else in New York's decision-making apparatus thinks Towns, Hart and Co. still have something to prove to earn their next pact, or they're just trying to both play hardball in negotiations in an effort to squeeze under that owner-imposing spending cap, the Knicks have made it clear that they are — for now, at least — done talking terms.

It's unclear at what point "later in the season" they might change their mind and be willing to come back to the table. For now, the Knicks, who'd been hoping to settle their business before the season, will have to just deal with the uncertainty and hope to play their way into a big payday — and the rest of the team, and its fan base, will have to hope that the ambient frustration and unpleasantness surrounding all this doesn't leach into the Knicks' efforts to defend their title.

"At the end of the day, we're humans, and I think what sometimes gets lost is that we are people — that we all have lives and things that we have to deal with and fix," Hart said on media day. "I wish I could sit there and say it wouldn't have any weight or any bearing, but you never know. Some people can handle it great, and some people can really struggle with it and that can kill their performance. I hope it gets done, but we'll see."