From Shams:
Free agent center Guerschon Yabusele has agreed to a two-year, $12 million contract with the New York Knicks, plus a player option, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
The Knicks negotiated the new deal with agents Olivier Mazet and Richie Felder for the big man.
Yabusele signed a one-year, $2.1 million deal with the Philadelphia 76ers last August after he played a big role in France’s run to the silver medal at the Paris Olympics.
The 6-foot-8, 260-pound power forward was a breakout star in Paris, scoring 22, 17 and 20 points against Canada, Germany and the United States, respectively. Across those three games, Yabusele shot a blistering 16-for-24 (66.7%) from the field.
His success over the summer translated to the NBA this season. He shot 50% from the field and 38% from 3 and was one of the few bright spots on a 76ers team that had its season derailed by injuries.
This is hugely awesome news.
It is also a case of the stupid current NBA cap system screwing guys like Yabu over, as he should definitely be out of the Knicks’ price range with the tax-payer mid-level, but since the system IS screwed over, the Knicks benefited!
Yabu will almost assuredly look to get paid next season (he has a player option for year two), but hey, a year of Yabu is better than NOT having a year of Yabu, so I am very pumped about this move. Bad job of Morey to let him go (but perhaps Yabu actively WANTED to play for a contender to sort of spotlight his skills for his next contract?).
84 replies on “ESPN.com: Sources: Knicks land C Guerschon Yabusele on 2-year, $12M deal”
And yeah, there is no way Giannis was actually pissed about the Bucks picking up Turner and waiving Dame. That was 100% performative because he’s friends with Dame.
So this interesting. First, from Stein: “The Knicks have been telling prospective free agents that they are nearing a resolution to their coaching search, league sources tell @JakeLFischer and me.”
Then, from Jeremy Cohen: “Sooo the Knicks don’t really have space underneath the second apron to sign prospective FAs. They’re extremely close to the hard cap. If they’re still telling FAs this, that implies they plan to create more wiggle room. The only way to do that would be moving money via trade”
Yabu Yabu
if mike brown is hired (and it seems like he is going to be)
and if he wants to bring borrego along with him as his lead assistant (which i think would be great)
i still do not think that they would be getting rid of brunson dad i even doubt that they could call it a demotion maybe he and borrego would be co-lead assistants in name only with borrego really doing the job
Waiving Lillard and stretching his $100+million contract to sign Myles Turner,
Paying both something like $25 million a year, may be the most Knicksy move by a non-Knicksy team I can recall.
Maybe it would be fun if the savants on the site could point out worse moves by non-Knicks teams…
But holy crap. And for the hope that Yannis won’t beg to be traded.
I mean, this might make him demand a trade…
wow
On the one hand this Turner defection has the chance to do to Indiana what iHart did to us.
On the other hand, Kevin Pritchard is really smart and he seemed to let this happen.
And on my third hand, maybe Pritchard didn’t want to do this but his cheap owner forced him to and it really is a big blow.
I’m tickled that this offseason has already seen the likely sunset of two of the three better teams than us in the East as contenders.
The Cavs got better and that sucks ass, but maybe there’s something to be said in the apron era for the value of simply not getting worse when you’re already good, because that is the inexorable tendency the aprons will cause for everyone who isn’t an asset billionaire like OKC.
They’ll still win the next five championships but maybe we can make a finals or two.
This is pretty crazy. It’s just NY and Cleveland left in the eastern conference.
Boston, Indiana, Detroit and Milwakee all imploded. Orlando and Philly only decent competition left.
Kevin Pritchard being good doesn’t change Ayton being bad.
atlanta could be sneaky good
On a side note the 2025 Yankees are the newest contender for the team I’ve hated rooting for most in my life.
it just feels like the mike brown announcement is imminent i am good with it especially if he brings borrego along with him
Don’t count the Knicks out.
Not sure we made the best moves last year. Afraid they will make more bad ones.
And I think firing Thibs was a very bad idea, made worse because the available prospects to replace him seem to be meh.
I’m not sure Milwaukee is going to be all that worse. I AM sure that Orlando is going to be very, very tough. Too early to say, but they could finish ahead of us.
But Indiana is done, the Celtics will struggle, and Detroit didn’t take a step forward, maybe back a little. The Hawks could be interesting, but I’m not a believer.
I guess at the moment I’m thinking Cavs, Orlando, Knicks. We’ll see.
Hmm, this tingles my “we’re going to dump Mitchell Robinson” sense and I don’t like it.
i guess he actually means don’t count the knicks in
Atlanta could be sneaky good, yes. Ditto Orlando.
seems lateral to losing hardaway i used to think that robinson was better but then he slipped off maybe renaissance in detroit without beasley and hardaway
I thought the Pistons were poised to make a leap if they made smart moves so I’m happy they signed LeVert and Robinson instead.
Guerschon Yabusele has a very aesthetical name.
100% agreed.
Nice to see so many teams in the East trip over themselves. The Knicks have improved by just staying put, sadly enough. Yabu is great, too, don’t get me wrong, but you know what I’m saying. If the other teams are all hitting themselves in the face with rakes, just don’t do that, as well, and you’ll be in decent shape.
A while back, Katz wrote an article about how the Knicks were encouraging their players to shoot floaters because they’re disproportionately offensively rebounded, allowing us to exploit Mitch and (at the time) iHart’s prowess. This partially led to our bizarro good offenses in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, which ranked 3rd and 7th in the league respectively despite being 20th and 16th in eFG%.
Clarkson is in love with the floater range, always has been. 89th percentile in short-mid frequency last season, a steep drop off from his 99th percentile frequency the year prior.
We know Mitch’s deal, 99th percentile among bigs in offensive rebounding this past season, the one before it, 98th the season before that, and so on.
So if the idea is to pair these two on the bench, we might see a bizarro good offense redux for those units. You can throw Hart and his 90th percentile among wings ORB% in there too. The Kobe Assist lives!
Kevin Porter Jr. PG
Gart Trent Jr. SG
Kyle Kuzma SF
Giannis PF
Myles Turner C
I mean, that’s just a shitty team, right?
The alternate option of staying put was ALSO bad, but this is not good.
I’m not really able to process the new East until the dust settles. Atlanta seems primed to improve and to be a top-5 team in the conference, but there’s a lot of ifs involved. Orlando is still clunky but Bane and a healthy Suggs could add stability and depth. Toronto seems poised to move out of the cellar if they get healthy and some development from their young core. Detroit has tons of room for growth just via internal development of young players, so even if they take a step back in the vets dept, I can see them being a very tough out. And the sleeper team in the conference just might be the Sixers if they get some immense injury luck.
I agree with Pags that we are sort improving relative to the competition this offseason by standing pat, at least for this year.
Bane, a healthy Suggs, and Tyus Jones. Just having a shooting guard who can shoot, and being able to put in a point guard who can run an offense, could be huge for them.
I also agree with TNFH in that when you are signing minimum salary vets, you have to pick your poison, and signing a guy who fills a definable need is a rational way of going about it. I feel about the same as I did for Cam Payne and Landry Shamet…wish there was better out there but whattayagonnado?
The only thing that concerns me is that Clarkson has a rep that those two guys didn’t. So they could easily be benched, while Clarkson…perhaps less likely.
On the other hand, we’ll have a new coach, who will have the freedom to do whatever he wants for a while. If it’s Brown, he’s someone with a rep for being popular with his players, and being a much better communicator than Thibs. (Who was popular with at least some of the players, but you had to be on his wavelength.)
Not sure of the cap particulars, but it seems that the beauty of vet’s minimum guys is that they can be waived at any point, right? So if he in any way falls short of what Leon (or by extension the coaching staff) wants from him, it would be easy to move on at any point.
No, we’re limited by the 2nd apron and needing to have 14 players on the roster. We cannot waive any of our players and maintain 14 players until the minimum salary prorates to ~$200k, over 90% of the season needs to pass before we sign another vet min.
thibs would have benched clarkson and maybe even dungeoned him i have confidence in the new coach to bench him if he is playing shitty and play him if he is playing well and to know the right times to do each
starters: brunson (34) mcbride (28) anunoby (32) towns (30) robinson (24)
dynamic bench: clarkson (16) bridges (23) hart (19) yabusele (20) hukporti (14)
the rest: kolek mccullar nnaji
I don’t see Bridges coming off the bench. For all kinds of reasons. I wouldn’t mind seeing McBride be one of the first guys in, maybe for Robinson to get the five-out thing going (once you win the tip…). Then bring Robinson back in with Hart and Clarkson for those Kobe assists…
Why do they need Turner?
i kinda love the team have to pray for continued luck with injuries come on medical staff but nice to have at least a little bit of trustable depth at each position along with switchable position players
sims is not the reason to ask why they need turner portis is the reason to ask why they need turner
for the record i do not see mikal coming off the bench either but it is something i would like to see at least attempted to see how it goes maybe against the dregs of the league it will let us know more about if he is the type to grouse or is the type to do what is asked of him maybe if he continues his uninspired play from the starting unit he would have less he could say about playing from the bench here and there
Thanks, EB, so you are saying that we are stuck with Clarkson because it is in effect a guaranteed salary for the year, and if we waived him, say, in January, there would not be any cap space freed up by waiving him to sign another UFA to a prorated minimum deal, that only the remaining cap space we have (say $200K right now) is available to sign a subsequent UFA? Does that apply to replacing the waived vet with two-way players as well?
Bridges isn’t going to the bench if he’s still here. Hart is likely going to the bench. The question — if you assume the roster stays as it is (other than whichever rookies we sign to the end of the bench), which it might not — is whether Deuce starts at the 2 or Yabu starts at the 4. Deuce is the better defender, but keeps us very small. Yabu is weaker on that end but allows OG and Mikal to play their best positions.
Alan, my tendency — which might be Thibs-centric, can’t help that at the moment — is to start Mitch at the 5. But I’d only play him like 20-24 minutes max, so a LOT of mixing and matching throughout the rest of the game. I think that’s where the fun lies.
I’m with Raven, play Mitch as few hack-a-Mitch minutes as possible.
Clarkson feels like drinking the whole vile of poison.
Cam and Shamet had their limitations but they didn’t make us actively worse like Clarkson likely will when he plays.
And what’s this definable need you speak of? Clarkson is a shooting guard. Full stop. And we have three guys who can play that position.
Yeah, we’re stuck with Clarkson’s salary unless we trade him or, for some reason, he was willing to sign a deal that wasn’t fully guaranteed. Maybe we could stretch him too, I don’t know if it’s something that needs to happen during the offseason.
2-way players don’t count against the cap or the roster. They have their own, separate 3 roster spots. We can sign and cut them as often as we like with no consequences. So, they don’t hurt our cap, but they don’t help us meet the roster minimum either.
Malik Beasley was apparently broke despite 60 million in career earnings.
EB, what if you cut Clarkson and convert a two-way?
Because of the 14-man roster minimum, the way we’d handle a situation in which Clarkson became some kind of locker room nightmare post-benching would be to send him home.
Converting a two-way gives them the prorated minimum (assuming you don’t want to give them more), which counts against the cap. So you can’t do it if a prorated minimum would take you over the cap.
I’m sort of in the middle between the extemes of the TNFH and hubert arguments. On one hand, I think that the guy who won 6MoY on a very good team was very Jamal Crawford-esque. If that’s the player we are getting for an even more limited role on a vet’s minimum, it’s fine. If he’s as terrible as he has been since the Jazz traded Spida and Gobert, then given what EB just clarified re: cap/roster implications, there is more risk than I thought at first.
Whatever, it’s done, let’s hope for the best and see what happens.
Some number-crunching I found by @KnickzFeed
Maybe Brock Aller has one more move left on the board…
One thing that bothers me about Yabusele is that he is a bruiser that seems pretty slow and ground-bound, even with all the dunk highlights. Our kryptonite last season was pace, and he might not help us keep up in a footrace type of game. I was hoping that we would increase our team speed and athleticism, which imho is lacking.
I really don’t understand why the hate for Clarkson. His stats for last season are not great but it was on high usage (27%) as a starter. We had no one on our bench last year who could have done that. Of course he is going to frustrate us sometimes, but given that our bench was one of the lowest scoring ones in the league last year, I think this probably is an improvement.
bingo!
Option #3: all of them (Deuce, Hart, Yabu) are on the bench, Mitch starts.
(I personally would start Deuce, but think Mitch is the most likely scenario)
Clarkson only started 9 out of 37 games last year. He didn’t start much the year before that either. He played lots of minutes per game, so you might call him a starter in that regard, but he has sucked in virtually all of those minutes. I don’t see a whole lot of daylight between him and Payne or Shamet, except in shot type distribution.
Y’all are underestimating Orlando. I wouldn’t be shocked if they finished ahead of us. They are not “promising,” they are ready and now have the pieces to play at the highest level.
I know that Miami is most likely, but I kind of want to see Lillard at Golden State.
So as it stands, our 15-man roster looks like this:
Sure-fire rotation players:
1. KAT
2. Brunson
3. OG
4. Bridges
5. Hart
6. Mitch
7. Deuce
8. Yabu
Likely rotation player:
9. Clarkson
Hopeful 400+ minute contributors:
10. Hukporti
11. Kolek
Need development:
12. Dadiet
So there are likely two slots that need to be filled, none of which can be filled by a vet’s minimum unless modifications in current deals make that possible.
The 3 two-ways are probably McCullar and possibly two of Diawara, Nnaji, and Pate.
I dunno, as I look at this I feel like a trade is coming to loosen things up a bit.
“@TheSteinLine
The Grizzlies say Jaren Jackson Jr., fresh off receiving a monster contract extension, sustained a turf toe injury in his right foot during a “live basketball run offsite” that will require a procedure to repair.”
oof!
I think Clarkson is a sure-fire rotation player, at least until Mike Brown stabs him in the heart with a garlic-infused wooden stake.
I’m looking forward to liking Yabu once preseason starts. Right now I’m just mad at him for taking Huk’s minutes.
As Doug says above, we can potentially sign a vet minimum if we hold off on signing someone to a rookie deal.
If we don’t do anything Doug suggests, McCullar is most likely on the 15-man roster because his 1yr of experience minimum salary fits below the cap.
Diawara will probably stay in Europe.
My guess is McCullar gets one of the baby minimum slots instead of a two-way, since he’s probably one of the better baby minimum candidates out there anyway and we’re familiar with him. Then Nnaji, Pate, Diawara, and whoever else can duke it out for the last one (Rokas almost certainly considers himself above that). We probably give whoever misses the cut a two-way offer.
Edit: it didn’t occur to me to enter the season with 13 men and then sign another baby minimum on day 14. Sounds like that pencils out, but boy, we’d be cutting it real close.
Question: what’s to stop us from blowing by the 2nd apron if we were to sign another player to, say, a one-year, $11 million contract? Then, that salary would come off the books the following year (or we could make different maneuvers to go back under the apron.) Wouldn’t it only cost us more Dolan bucks, aside from hampering our ability to make trades later in the season?
If we wait the full 14 days, I have us at $65,771 under the hard cap. We could non-guarantee the player and get another 14 day reprieve for around $100K extra cap space, which would be useful because $65K doesn’t let us use a 10-day.
We can also hold off on signing the vet minimum player, or both players, to save more money… assuming they’re amenable.
We’re hard capped at the 2nd apron after using the taxpayer MLE on Yabu.
Also, we don’t have any exceptions for $11M even if we did have space. We could only do it with bird rights, which would only be Precious Achiuwa or a S&T with Achiuwa.
I’ve been doing a deeper dive into Jordan Clarkson. Nothing I have seem suggests anything but a high-character guy. Looking at his film, it seems like the athleticism he had when he won 6MoY is still there. And there is no question that he has a more diversified (if inefficient) game than either Payne or Shamet, with the very large caveat that he is a very inconsistent 3pt shooter at best and just lousy at worst.
There’s probably a minimum TS% at which he becomes a plus player, maybe .550 or so, assuming that he opens things up for others on the bench unit. Maybe being back in a winning environment with an energized, knowledgeable fan base, a hypercritical media, and an open-minded coach will bring out the best in him, which is clearly better than the best in either Payne or Shamet.
It’s not really etched in stone that we are using the TPMLE on Yabu, is it? If we trade a rotation piece like Mitch or Hart before finalizing Yabu’s deal, Aller might have options, no?
If Cam Payne had less common sense he easily could easily have jacked up more ill-advised shots to increase his USG to 27.
Did you ever watch a Knicks game last year and think “I know what we need, a Cam Payne with less common sense”?
Another hidden skill that Yabusele possesses: he’s a good screen setter, which we need desperately.
I can’t think of any other reasonable way to sign him.
I don’t think we can S&T for him because Philly can’t sign him for enough money to equal the reported deal.
We don’t have any other exceptions.
Trading Mitch into cap space wouldn’t free up any exceptions or meaningful money.
Trading Hart into cap space would open up the Full MLE, but we wouldn’t be far enough under to use all of it. So after Yabu, I think we’d have around $5M left below the tax threshold, which would be our new hard cap if we use the full MLE.
TLDR: Our roster is really expensive, so it’s almost certainly the TP-MLE.
Turner was the one Pacer that I liked a little less after becoming a fan of the team. He is very off and on, as evidenced by his benching in the 2nd half of game 7. I see why he was perpetually on the trading block for the past 10 years.
Still, what he brings is hard to replace, certainly not at 80/20 or even 70/30 or 65/35. Maybe Pritchard can pull off 60/40? It’s a thin market though.
For you bettors out there, look for Donnie Magic Fan sometime around April, 2026. (Suggs is the new Nesmith, if he can just stay in the dang court)
Cam Payne had a .532 TS% last year on a 20.8% usage. Clarkson had a .540 TS% on a 27.8% usage. My guess is that if Cam upped his usage to 27.8% last year, he would have had an even lower TS%, since by my reckoning, he never looked to be passing up good shots.
In any case, these are the kinds of players that are available for the vet’s minimum. Probably better to have a guy with 6MoY chops in the Jamal Crawford/Lou Williams efficiency mode who has possibly been over-utilized/miscast on shitty teams for the last 3 years than a guy who never broke the 11 mark in PPG and can’t do much inside the arc and never gets to the line. It’s pretty telling that Clarkson’s lowest ppg over 11 seasons is higher than Cam’s highest over 10 seasons.
Thanks again, EB, sorry for all the questions, just noting that Aller pulled off some wild stuff last year (and before) in the sequencing of trades. But I agree that it’s almost a certainty that its the TPMLE, especially given Philly’s cap sheet.
My major impression of Yabu was watching him kick some ass in the Olympics. I am sure I am going to love him but the stat line isn’t all that robust, somewhat surprisingly.
I definitely agree about the screen setting. We really missed that this year. And we also definitely need a guy who can break the defense down off the dribble, other than Brunson. If Clarkson can do that good.
Although the chances of me liking him seem quite low at the moment.
Yabu isn’t some godsend, but he’s pretty damn good for a cheap free agent. I’m super pumped about him coming here.
While I would love for this to be the kind of setback that losing iHart was for us, I can’t help but see the outline of a smart plan here.
The Pacers are not going to compete next year, so they don’t need to replace him in this market.
Now they will win less games next year, which means a higher draft pick next summer. And bc of the money they saved they will have access to the full MLE, too.
Turner was ok, but Halliburton made him look a lot better, and I think they know they Halliburton can make someone else look a lot better, too. They will take their medicine this year, and next year retool with a prime draft pick and the full MLE to use.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they slide Isaiah Hartenstein into that MLE next summer when the Thunder decline his option. Either way I think they’re going to end up better in the end here.
Yes, but it only tells us that Clarkson averaged 4 additional shots per 36 minutes. And at his efficiency that’s not a good thing.
fun fact (unless you’re a pelicans fan, but no one is, so…)
indiana only has their pick because they traded the 23rd pick in this draft to new orleans for their own 2026 pick.
that’s the same 23rd pick new orleans packaged with an unprotected first to move up.
so joe dumars actually gave up two unprotected 2026 firsts to get the 11th pick in the draft: his own and the Pacers (which is looking pretty good right now).
I don’t know where you come up with this shit sometimes. How is Hali going to make someone 7 foot who led the league twice in blocked shots and 3rd in the league this season.
Where are you going to find a guy who is one of the best rim protector AND shoots 39.6% on 3s shooting good volume.
Mike Brown hm
Myles Turner is an elite rim protector who can also shoot 3’s. The rest of his game isn’t amazing, but given those two skills, he doesn’t need to have many other attributes.
My main beef with next year’s Knicks so far is they they don’t have enough rim protection. How many championship teams have had shitty rim protection? There can’t be very many.
A new big 3 coming?!?!
Bob doesn’t know where I came up with the crazy idea that an elite PG can make players around him better. Ok, Bob.