Further details are emerging of the blockbuster three-team trade that will land Karl-Anthony Towns with the New York Knicks, and former Golden State Warriors guard Donte DiVincenzo to the Minnesota Timberwolves, along with Julius Randle.
It also turns out the Warriors will be involved in some tiny way, with one of their future picks landing with the Charlotte Hornets who are the third team included to help broker the deal between the Knicks and Timberwolves that was initially reported on Friday.
The Warriors 2026 second-round pick will head to the Hornets
According to ESPN's Bobby Marks on Tuesday, the Knicks will get Towns and the draft rights to James Nnaji, the Timberwolves will get Randle, DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a 2025 top 13 protected Detroit first-round pick, and the Hornets will get three second-round picks, three players sign-and-traded from the Knicks, and $7.2 million in cash.
One of those picks Charlotte has acquired is Golden State's 2026 second-round pick. It's one that's driven a long road since the Warriors initially traded the pick over five years ago -- on July 8, 2019 to be exact. Fair to say it's a deal many Warrior fans will have forgotten, with the franchise trading the second-round pick along with former first-round pick Damian Jones to the Atlanta Hawks for Omari Spellman.
Spellman would play 49 total games for Golden State during the fateful 2019-20 season, having averaged 7.6 points and 4.5 rebounds on 43.1% shooting from the floor and 39.1% from three-point range.
The 6'8" big man had some talent as a floor spacer at the four or five spot, but his NBA career was done after just two years and 95 total games. Since then Spellman has played internationally and even acquired Lebanese citizenship to allow him to play with their national team.
Jones, a 2x NBA champion with Golden State, would play 55 games in his one year with Atlanta before playing with a host of different teams across the last few seasons. The 6'11" center enjoyed an eight-year career despite averaging less than 35 games per season, and has now moved internationally this offseason where he'll play for the Zhejiang Golden Bulls in China.
Since that initial deal in 2019, the Warriors 2026 second-round pick also flipped from Atlanta to the Oklahoma City Thunder, onto New York, and now to Charlotte in this blockbuster trade. Who knows where the pick will end up by the time it conveys in nearly two years, but the Warriors currently project to have a second-round pick in 2026 regardless after acquiring one from the Hawks in the multi-team James Wiseman/Gary Payton II trade in February last year.
