Talk of the Towns: Knicks are New York's most interesting, intriguing, exciting team

Are you not entertained? Are you not intrigued? Excited? Concerned? Engaged? Absorbed?

Giddy, even?

Are you not overwhelmed with complicated feelings absent among Knicks fans for most of the first 20 years of the 21st century?

This is remarkable stuff.

Are the Knicks the best pro sports team in the New York area? That we do not yet know. Are they the most interesting? They are.

Again, that would have been an absurd statement in these parts for most of recent history. Then we were presented the latest evidence of a new reality.

On Friday night, the Knicks made a trade that sent Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo and a first-round draft pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Karl-Anthony Towns.

This occurred smack in the middle of a four-day stretch in which the Yankees clinched the AL East title, the Mets fought for their playoff lives, the Giants met the dreaded Cowboys, the Jets would seek a third straight victory behind Aaron Rodgers and the Liberty were opening a playoff series against their nemeses from Vegas.

Yet somehow the Knicks posted up the local sports news cycle and finished with a resounding dunk.

And for those of us who prefer chaos and conversation to sure things, the added beauty of this trade is that it might not work. There are smart basketball people on both sides of the debate.

It could be a win-win for the teams or a lose-lose or somewhere in between, with every scenario thoroughly plausible at this stage.

All fans can do is trust Leon Rose, because most of the buttons he has pushed as president have been the right ones.

There is no general manager in New York who has built up more goodwill, and now he is using some of that political capital to go all-in for a championship.

Rose had better be right in taking a risk like this, because he already had a good thing going. But he has been right on risks before, so why doubt him now?

It has been quite a process.

Jalen Brunson is the only regular starter from the first two months of last season who is projected to start in this season’s opener.

OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Towns all arrived this calendar year, and Josh Hart has risen from a bench player to a pillar.

It has been jarring for fans — not to mention the players involved.

Randle was a fixture who helped revive the Knicks after signing as a free agency consolation prize in 2019. He deserves credit for rising above his many critics.

DiVincenzo, who did great work down the stretch last season, now will not be around to play with Bridges and form a Villanova alumni quartet.

It’s a tough business. But it pays well.

Towns figures to fit in fine not only in hoops terms but in personal ones. He went to St. Joseph High in Metuchen, New Jersey — where his father, Karl Sr., is the new head coach — and knows the area well.

He also seems to be a well-respected mensch who will be smart enough to follow Brunson’s lead and do everything he can for the cause.

There will be an adjustment period, of course. Towns illustrated his deep ties to the Timberwolves with an Instagram post on Saturday that appeared to show him shooting free throws at the team’s practice facility at 3:11 a.m., with his father rebounding for him.

Everyone still is processing this. But soon the focus will be solely on the near future.

The Knicks’ Oct. 22 opener against the Celtics — the team they presumably must climb over to win the Eastern Conference title — is going to be quite the spectacle.

And that’s as it should be. New York knows how to make a big deal out of any team that is a title contender, but there is something different about a Knicks run, as those old enough to remember the early 1970s and/or 1990s can attest.

Partly it is the fact that the Knicks own a larger percentage of local fandom that any team in baseball, football or hockey.

Partly it is the fact that even though New York historically is a baseball town, it always has had hoops embedded in its DNA, a special soft spot for the city game that never goes away.

When the Knicks are good, the Garden provides a stylish glow on winter nights that no other local team or venue can match.

The fans always have been there, loyal even when the players were awful. Now they have a team worthy of them.

Is Towns the final piece for the Knicks? Ask me again in June.

But this much is clear: Everyone will be watching starting in October.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.