News & Blogs
St. John’s alum Oziyah Sellers among those on Knicks’ Summer League roster – New York Daily News
Sources: Knicks very happy with roster core in wake of LeBron James report – SNY
Eastern Conference Offseason Tracker [UPDATED] – Posting & Toasting
NBA title odds shift after Jaylen Brown, Kawhi Leonard trades; Knicks move ahead of Celtics – The New York Times
Mitchell Robinson Tells OG Anunoby ‘Hopefully the Truth Comes Out’ After Leaving Knicks for Celtics – BleacherReport
Knicks’ interest in LeBron James unclear after conflicting reports – Posting & Toasting
5 potential Mitchell Robinson replacements Knicks can consider – SNY
Knicks’ Jeremy Sochan Reacts to Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce Wedding Snub, Calls for Josh Hart to Help – BleacherReport
Breaking News: Knicks Sign C Andre Dummond to 1 Year $3.9M Deal – Knicks Fan TV
BREAKING: KNICKS SIGN ANDRE DRUMMOND (REACTION) – Knicks Film School
Cap Casualties Or Cheap Owners – Knick of Time
Pod Strickland Patreon Preview Episode 608 feat. Raheem Palmer: Did the Knicks Change Everything? – The Strickland
YT News
73 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.07.04)”
what the hecks man – you all still sound asleep back east…
wakey bakey baby…
hopefully mister drummond will continue his back waxing regimen once donning orange and blue…
for a while dude looked like big foot when he was playing for detroit…
I would rather Drummond lose 20lbs than the hair on his back. (he wears a T-shirt anyway!)
I’m feeling better about Andre.
He’s not Mitch on defense but he will provide the rebounding Mitch gave us. He’s a good screen setter and is now a decent shooter. He’ll make the occasional corner three and won’t kill us at the line.
In a limited role he’ll be fine. He actually had to do a lot last season backing up Embiid and performed pretty well in that role, so I think here he’ll be fine.
But we need another center for sure. And I think the more I think about it I’d like us to grab another vet for vet minimum and maybe get looney or Richards.
I just don’t like the idea of having to trade deuce. I think having deuce and Shamet (and Clarkson) is a very nice luxury to have off the bench. It gives brown options to play the hot hand.
Similarly with Drummond and another veteran big brown will have options to throw out there. If we can get a third big who is an upgrade over Huk then the sum of those two guys could be equal or better than Mitch and Huk bc it will give brown some line up flexibility.
Or maybe that third “big” is Sochan?
Then grab lebron. Yes I’m going to keep mentioning it until it does or doesn’t happen.
Gaining weight in Philly is not a shocker. He wandered through the Reading Terminal Market a few too many times. As long as he doesn’t follow Yabu’s NY training plan, he’ll be fine.
I remember seeing Yabu’s butt live during a preseason game and thinking uh-oh, this guy is not in shape. Hopefully that won’t be the case with Andre.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Andre interviewed before. Here he is on last year’s media day. Seems like a pretty cool dude, great smile!
So getting Drummond for 2.4 (according to what EB says) saved us 1.1m compared to Huk’s 3.5m? Seems meaningful at this point, if it’s true.
I was away yesterday, my KB friends. Of course i’m happy we won against Croatia, and hopefully we’ll meet you in the Round of 8, because that’d mean we managed to send Spain home (sorry neighbors). 😉
Happy for Queta, but i can’t root for him on that team. LOL
And did i tell you that Queta, and Mazulla, were at the arena when my beloved FC Porto played Benfica in the Portuguese basketball finals? Rooting for Benfica… he clearly doesn’t want my support. LOL
We were losing by 35pts in the 3rd, so their coach put the 3rd stringers all 4th. What happened next? We won the next 3 games and the championship! 🙂 I was there for game 3 and 4 in Porto.
Great story, cyber. Your opinion of the controversial call?
Clarkson &
Sochan &
Figure It Out Later
How good is Kool Mo D
Nice to see a lot of SL action will be on Prime Video
Drummond is fine as a placeholder until something better shakes loose. He was the best immediate option who met the three bare minimum requirements the 26-27 Knicks seek in a backup center:
– Tall (unlike Looney)
– Experienced (unlike the Cs passed on in the 2nd round)
– Cheap (unlike a lot of guys)
I doubt he’s the final piece. The team probably knew long before any of us did that Mitch was unlikely to return. There are signs that the relationship between player and team had grown sour – from Coach Brown’s salty comments re Pinkygate to Mitch’s “hopefully the truth comes out at some point” tweet immediately following his departure. There’s likely been a Mitch Plan B in mind for weeks now and it ain’t Andre Drummond.
My guess is the FO has a shortlist of trade targets whose current teams are unwilling to come to the table right now. So Leon has chosen to play the waiting game, signing Drummond as placeholder in the meantime. He’s totally meh but if the Knicks wind up having to start the season with him as their 10-15 mpg #2 center, he won’t be a total disaster either.
Hard to lose that way, but if the technology says the croatian player touched the ball, unless we don’t trust the technology there’s not a lot to argue. Of course i’d be mad losing that way, so i don’t blame them for being upset. One thing Croatians are not talking about is that the game should be over by the time the play happened.
So the Sixers are starting Maxey (6-2) at PG, Edgecombe (6-4) at SG, and Brown (6-6) at SF? The fit isn’t great.
I’m fine with adding Drummond as one of the Cs, but I don’t think he’s the solution.
The thing I find most interesting is that they gave Drummond 3.9m and turned down Hukporti for 3.4m. I don’t agree with that. Drummond has the desired veteran experience but is clearly on the downside while Hukporti is still young enough to improve. I would have added Hukporti and tried to find a veteran to add to him.
There may still be more moves to make now or at the deadline, but I’m starting to feel like Leon was still partying over the championship while he was on the phone talking deals and thinking about our C position. We need to make a deal.
Gondrezick
I agree with what you are saying or at least I hope that’s correct.
Happy 4th everyone!
Here’s a video of legends singing Brunson’s praises, including the likes of Reggie, Garnett, Pierce, Isiah. Great stuff.
I don’t care how effusive their praise is, I’d rather shove needles into my ears than listen to anything they have to say.
Strat, I think I read somewhere that even though Drummond will make 3.9 million as a vet minimum player, only like 2.5 counts against the cap bc that’s the vet minimum cap hold. The longer a player is in the league the more they make at the vet minimum but the cap hit is always the same.
So they actually saved another million letting Hik go and getting Drummond.
And for those of you who have some time to kill, here’s the best documentary compilation of the 1970 champs. Lots of great interviews plus game footage and interviews from the Willis Reed game that I hadn’t seen before.
I guess that I worry a bit about the spectacular greatness of that 1970 team being overwhelmed by this 2026 team and sort of getting lost as the generation who remembers that team dwindles away. If it has to happen, I’m glad that character-wise, this team is worthy of having that torch passed to them. But in the video, hearing the voices of not only the players, but Red Holtzman, Marv Albert, Howard Cosell, and then a brief look at the transition to the 1973 champs (and you can kind of feel that the 1973 championship was anticlimactic).
I hope that folks don’t take my habit of posting of these videos as some kind of weird “get off my lawn” boomer stuff. I love history in general, and think it adds a dimension to my appreciation of the game.
And while there are enough similarities to favorably compare the teams, I still give the overall nod to the 1970 team as the greatest Knicks team of all time. I may never convince anyone of that, especially those that didn’t experience it, but I hope that enough folks go deep enough into the history of that team and that time to make an informed comparison.
Thanks Z Man. This was my favorite team ever in any sport. Still, get off my lawn.
I’m a vinyl record nerd who has amassed a fairly large collection over the decades. This one remains a perennial favorite. I’d occasionally put it on the turntable to help sustain me during our many years in the desert.
One thing that came through is that Dick Barnett was sort of the Josh Hart of that team. Everyone else was kind of serious and he was a cut-up that kept things loose in the locker room. Clyde had said on many occasions that Dick Barnett was his role model in terms of his stylish dressing.
That helps, but I’m not sure how much that changes my view given I was whining about letting Hukporti walk over only 1m (3.4m total) to begin with.
To be clear, my view is that neither is a clear solution, but Hukporti is younger with at least some potential for upside. So if we don’t solve the C problem now, I would rather have given Hukporti a chance to win the job until the trade deadline than play Drummond and know he’s a one year filler.
From where we are, I still think we need a trade either now or at the deadline.
We accumulated some second rounders during the draft. Maybe we can work something out where we send 2nd rounders for filler and then that filler and a pile of 2nd rounders for a decent young C. That would save Deuce until next year’s problems with the 2nd apron.
How is the fit any worse than the Knicks starting Brunson 6-2, Hart 6-5 and Bridges 6-6 at 1-2-3?
Gondo …I have that album…scratches and all…still savor it
1970 still the apex of my sports fandom. will definitely watch the vid. ( okay Boomer)
Couple of things I noticed about Drummond in perusing his b-r page:
-He is a son of Mount Vernon, so there’s a hometown angle
-He was a relatively high-usage player for most of his career…averaged 21.4% and was as high as the mid-20’s in a number of years.
-He is the all-time leader in career DRB% and TRB%.
-As recently as 2023-24 with CHI, he led the NBA in ORebs per 100, DRebs per 100, and Total Rebs per 100.
-He was 32-90 from 3 last year (35.6%) and 4-8 in the playoffs.
-He averaged 1.4 blocks per 36 last year, just a bit below his career average of 1.7
-He only shot 56% from 0-3 feet last year, well below his career average of .64%
I am hoping that Mike Brown can coach him up and that he will benefit from having a healthy, talented, mature, and intelligent team around him.
Z-Man, this montage comes from the 1989 History of The New York Knicks, which still is my favorite sports video of all time. I remember when the VHS came in the mail with its Knicks ephemera collage cover. The feeling of warmth that fills me when I listen to that music and see those glory years guys talking about each other is indescribable. The only complaint was from my dad who thought the video gave short shrift to the Baltimore Bullets first round series in 1970 which was epic. Those championship years resonate with those who watched them and the generation immediately after (Gen X) who only sniffed the fumes of the team’s remnants.
Strat, I hear you but the Huk thing was about maximizing the use of the TPMLE. Unlike Drummond, Huk was a pure cap-space drain, and that extra million would have lowered the TPMLE to the point where it was no better than a minimum deal for a seasoned vet. You want to maximize the utility of that $5-6M so that you can attract players a step up from the minimum. We saw this year how Yabu’s salary slot was instrumental at the deadline in landing Alvarado. That tiny bit of flexibility in outgoing salary matters.
“The only complaint was from my dad who thought the video gave short shrift to the Baltimore Bullets first round series in 1970 which was epic.”
Yes, in fact, the battles with teams in the earlier rounds in general are not well covered. But you get a great sense of the character of the players and the team, and of Marv Albert’s greatness as a radio guy, and of Red Holtzman…with all of these that I’ve watched, I didn’t know until now he was initially reluctant to take the job!
Alxo, I loved that it showed the intro of the players in Game 7, and I remember well how that sounded back then…with the organ playing a few notes in the background….a far cry from the massive productions the team intros involve these days.
If the small difference in salary means that much and they can pull something like that off, I’ll be fine with it. I think all the 2nd rounders and/or Deuce and/or another young player like Dadiet are going to be the key to getting back a player that will make me happy.
pepper,
Hang on to that record. It’s become quite collectible! The sales history on the linked Discogs page shows that six copies of that nearly 60 year old LP have been sold in the past three weeks.
The Knicks are now bigger than the Beatles & Taylor Swift!
“To the Knicks fans, I know what this city expects, and I’m ready to embrace it. I’m coming in with gratitude, hunger, and a mindset to work,” Drummond wrote in concluding his post. “Let’s make this chapter special.”
Andre needs to walk the walk now….
and, maintain a dolphin smooth back…
body hair is so last millennium…
and a very good afternoon/morning/whatever time it might be were your at KfniNJ…
have some redbone for your day…
The whole “Ok, boomer,” “get off my lawn” thing is silly. If someone who came of age under the Weimar Republic had noted in 1938 that things had gotten way worse in Germany, anyone who retorted with the German equivalent of “Ok, boomer” would have sounded like an abject idiot.
The passage of time doesn’t necessarily equate to things getting better. Societies improve, societies regress.
In Act 4 of Julius Caesar Cassius says to Brutus, “Of your philosophy you make no use if you give place to accidental evils!”
Strat, you are a semi professional horse player. You philosophy is analyzing the form of the horses and their connections. You should do the same when predicting Leon’s actions.
Leon is an agent who is expert in valuing players and has shown a distinct loathing to overpaying players (in his opinion). He couldn’t make a deal with IQ so he traded him. He also believes in paying players according to HIS evaluation, not the hive minds. See Jalen Brunson and OG. Both were widely though as huge overpays, but he went out on a limb and was proven widely correct. He’s not going past the deadline with KAT and Drummond with a G league scrub as his 3rd center.
Why do i mention this. Because everyone is concentrating on the back up center and not the bigger picture.
He has a KAT option stairing him in the eye. He isn’t going to extend him for the max as KAT likely wants. His recent history with IQ, Huk and Mitch tells us that. He isn’t willing to negotiate what he considers a bad contract from the team’s standpoint.
If KAT’s value is at an all time high and if he doesn’t extend at a reasonable price he going to be moved to a team like Houston where Durant might feel the upgrade from Senguin to KAT just might make them competitive in the west.
Leon isn’t unaware of the back up center position nor is he partying and asleep at the switch. He’s evaluating the big picture. There is no need to have a front line back up on the roster july 4th where there isn’t a practice for 3 months.
Oh E, that’s so stupid, the shaming of Boomers has nothing to do with where society is in the moment, it’s trolling old people for being fossilized and holding onto no longer relevant behaviors and attitudes. It’s been going on since we came out of the caves, and will continue as long as people, you know, get old. Or get young and cocky, as in that youth has the answers (which they rarely if ever actually have).
It’s certainly lowlife trolling, but also a useful reminder to old people to revisit their positions on things.
Leave it to E to equate a Knicks championship to the Weimar Republic. Interesting way to pollute a thread. Gotta hand it to him
Regarding Andre-he seems like a good locker room guy. That counts alot and am assuming Leon has told him/his agent that he might wind up out of the rotation. But I like the move because it gives us leverage ,,more than Huk would’ve, in trading for another big. Huk would need to make a leap to be a legitimate backup C; Andre just needs to show flashes and be as good as he was 2 years ago for teams to know we are not desperate.
Like Jaylen Brown, E likes to think he’s the smartest person in the room. Unlike Jaylen Brown, he rarely is.
(And E, I get that in some roundabout way you were correcting my self-deprecating comment. No need to do that, in fact, it’s kinda patronizing. But thanks anyway.)
leon might be partying, and you know, he probably did get some sleep last night…
sometimes patience isn’t a virtue, it’s just being lazy…
get off your ass leon, and get us a good young center already…
I doubt that it is/was laziness on Leon’s part.
I don’t know what Leon’s level of unhappiness was about being ordered to stay under the second apron. Was he apoplectic? Or just annoyed? Or 55-45 and easily persuaded?
No matter. He had to do it. And once that decree was made, it was either:
-maybe convince Mitch to stay for a lot less ($10-20M over the life of the contract) with no guarantee that he wouldn’t be traded anyway, and even if he agreed you would lose Shamet plus some other options for filling out the roster
-Lose Mitch and find backups in the bargain bin
Signing Huk to the deal he got from Philly would have shrunk the size of the TPMLE. It is a close call. I would have liked to have kept him.
None of the other vet’s minimum guys are any better than Drummond.
The full TPMLE (or close) might land a better 2nd or 3rd stringer.
Drummond has a much higher floor than Hukporti. Hukporti’s floor is Jericho Sims. Drummond no matter what is going to be a terror on the boards, and was the closest thing to Mitch available in the rebounding department. We shouldn’t see a steep dropoff in rebounding, which was a team strength. Huk is an okay not great rebounder.
Hukporti is probably better defender than Drummond already, but the turnovers and lack of any shooting range on offense are problematic. For this upcoming season I’d rather have Drummond.
The key for overcoming the loss of Mitch is to scheme differently so that you are less dependent on the extra “eliteness” of the things Mitch does well. A bit more small-ball. A bit more Drummond in the corner as a 4 1/2 out configuration. An adjustment on drop coverage when Drummond is out there.
Meaning, you can’t really replace those super-elite skills that Mitch has, but you can minimize the impact of losing them.
Drummond. Not bad
Back up C’s main thing imo is to be able to keep ‘IF KAT is Out’ the dangerous prime Cs off the paint.
He’s a good Defender and a big body.
He can do that.
I thought it was possible we sold the Onyenso pick because he wouldn’t play ball on a two-way. He signed one with the Pistons yesterday.
I don’t even think he’ll amount to much, but I remain befuddled by our decision to not give him a literal free look. Again, there was no asset log rolling on this one. We sold the pick.
Drummond is not really a good defender anymore. In fact, he’s a downright poor defender. Rebounding is part of defense, so he does have that going for him, but he’s hapless when it comes to defending the pick and roll and he has sloth-like foot speed.
Reed was ok in summer league yesterday. Carr was pretty good. Not a Knick possibility, but Lendeborg was outstanding.
This is why I said you shouldn’t blame Dolan for our draft. It’s not our thing.
Can’t kill ‘em for it anymore, but can’t blame Dolan, either.
Yeah..i saw that after googling a bit but having Rebs records and 1-1,5 stl/blk in your career doesn’t exactly mean slow and lazy in my book
I wonder if we signed Quinten Post to the an offer sheet for as close to the TPMLE as we have left whether the Warriors would match. I think they definitely would, no?
Of the other guys remaining, I’d be least excited about Nick Richards, who seems like a very low-b-ball player. It’s sort of Looney or bust for me.
The analytics agree with you but he’s only 32 (KAT is 30) and while that’s “aging” it’s not old. For the last 3 years his DBPM was negative (-0.7, -0.8, -0.2). Another regression is his efficiency around the rim with his 2pt% dropping each of the past 4 years (61%, 56%, 53%, 51%). But he developed a 3 point shot (36%) and has improved from Mitch-level dismal FT% (36% in 2015/16) to respectable (63% in 2025/26).
So I don’t think he’s done. I think he needs to be energized and revitalized. He’s stated that he’s motivated. How motivated? This is where culture and chemistry come in. Remember that he was all-NBA at one point.
It’s wishful thinking, I know.
“Of the other guys remaining, I’d be least excited about Nick Richards, who seems like a very low-b-ball player. It’s sort of Looney or bust for me.”
I too wanted Looney so as to get a little bit of defense out of that position again,but he was injured last season and only played around 20 games. Big turn-off.
love is laying in bed all day watching reruns of some old weird reality show (bad girls club?), cuz, get in where you can fit in…
days like today, feel like I just may be getting this whole partnering up thing…
Isn’t Towns due for a reputation bounce to his whistle? If so it’ll help with minutes at the 5.
Drummond had to start a bunch of games last year bc of Embiid constantly missing games. Hopefully that won’t be as much of an issue with us and he’ll play pretty limited minutes solely off the bench each night.
That being said. We do need another center option.
Drummond’s had an interesting career. Per some superdorks he was the best rookie center ever, got a max contract, didn’t get hurt or regress but still became rapidly unplayable until he was finally traded for a 2nd round pick. He has since effectively lingered in the league as his bully’s understudy.
Is 29 year old Jowles happy he’s a Knick?
There’s some weird stuff on Andre Drummond’s splits page from last year.
-he played way better in the 28 games where he got 20+ minutes (especially 30+ minutes).
-He played way better against EC teams than WC teams.
-He played way better pre-ASB than post.
He’s turning 33, which isn’t young but also not that old. There is a lot of physical ability left in this guy. It is mostly about how much can Mike Brown and the seriousness that this championship Knicks team will demand from him motivate him to be his best self in his role. I can’t say for sure, but he did not look to be in particularly good shape this past year. I know he was coming off of a serious toe injury, so maybe that messed with his offseason, and seriously, when your team has Joel Embiid’s bitch-ass self as its leader, how much do you feel like running through a wall for him?
That’s my big hope…that Drummond is embraced from day 1 and put on a fitness/nutrition/skill regimen that makes him better, even if only marginally. He will certainly find out in short order the size of the shoes he has to fill in the hearts and minds of Knicks fans and the media. He’s gonna get a level of scrutiny that he never got before. Maybe he should be fully briefed (if he isn’t already aware) on what happened to his ex-teammate Guerschon Yabusele when he failed to live up to expectations and basically got run out of town to the point that he declined a lucrative (for him) player option.
Now if he shows up to camp in the best shape in the last 10 years, and does everything that Leon, Brown, Brunson, etc. expects him to do and he still comes up short of expectations, fans can accept that. But what he showed in Philly is not gonna be even close to good enough to lessen the pain of losing Mitch.
Let’s go, Andre. No fucking around. All business.
Interestingly, Andre has size 16 shoes, while KAT is a 20. Mitch is also a 20. Quite the shoes to fill.
Okay, maybe not all that interesting. Happy Fourth everyone.
Hi Geo, nice track. I couldn’t reply when you posted because it’s twelve hours ahead here, i.e. one in the morning.
One player that I’m keeping an eye on in summer league is Jamarion Sharp. Obviously tough to miss, this G-league defensive player of the league center is 7’5″ and averaged 3.8 blocks per game last year for the Texas Legends. I doubt he’s making the Kings roster and is the kind of developmental player we need at C3.
I took a look at Sharp’s film and read some scouting stuff. He’s got potential as a shot-blocker but is lacking in pretty much every other facet of the game on both ends. Doesn’t have NBA-level strength. Seems like he’s still more of a 2-way guy than worth a roster spot.
hey now, and a very happy sunday to you KfniNJ…
a lifetime ago I worked in semi-conductor manufacturing, so it was cool to read a bit about the conference you recently attended/presented at…
was thinking of just how much change you must have witnessed being so integrated ( 😉 ) in to the industry for so many years…very interesting field you have the chance to participate in…helping to lead the way to the future, you are…
I like Moussa Cisse a lot as a 3rd big but Dallas probably isn’t gonna cooperate.
Please throw a shitload of seconds, Dadiet, and our 2033 at Milwaukee for Ware. That would literally make everything OK again.
If we somehow got Cisse (two seconds and Dadiet?), I would put him ahead of Drummond on the depth chart—nothing against Drum at all; I like the pickup—but I think that Cisse’s defense as the 2nd big would be great to have. Hell, I could even live with some Cisse/Drum lineups.
But like Z just said, probably not happening.
Dear Whatever Asshat Picks The Starting Lineup
For The Mets,
You’re 92 games out of the last wild card. You’re genuinely the worst team in MLB. LET YOUR BEST YOUNG PLAYER PLAY AGAINST LEFT HANDED PITCHING. HOW IS THIS KID GONNA LEARN TO HIT LEFT HANDED PITCHING IF YOU GIVE HIS AT BATS TO TYRONE FUCKING TAYLOR?
That is truly a spectacular bunch of fucking idiots running that team over there.
History of the Knicks….starting right now kn NBA channel
Was chatting with a friend last night, whose colleague is next door neighbors to the Brunsons in Westchester. They went to visit them last week and Jalen handed the MVP trophy to her 14 year old son and said, “How does that feel”.
This site uses User Verification plugin to reduce spam. See how your comment data is processed.