Knicks Morning News (2026.07.19)

This time last year last year, Cisse was an undrafted no-name who parlayed a promising Summer League into a 2-way with Dallas, a few impressive regular season stat lines (including MLK Day against NYK), an offer sheet from Leon Rose, and, finally, a guaranteed regular contract and roster spot with the 26-27 Mavs.

That’s not a common NBA career arc but it’s hardly a one-off, either. Every year there seems to be a sprinkling of unheralded SL hopefuls who find their way onto NBA rosters and manage to become productive players over time. More than likely there’s another one in the mix this year – maybe even a center who’s roughly equivalent in ability to a Moussa Cisse. Or, Ariel Hukporti.

It was all I could do to watch four Summer Knicks games and that was my absolute limit for SL viewing. So I can’t claim to have any insight into the promising no-names around the league who might be ready to make the leap. I do recall that in the lead up to the NYK-Mavs tilt, the announcers spent a few minutes talking up Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu as a big who’s flashed for Dallas in SL this year. Don’t know Thing One about him but with Cisse now taking up one end of the roster spot in Dallas, someone like Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu might be harder for them to keep.

And were he to somehow wind up on the Knicks, an added bonus would be the entertainment value of listening to the million and one ways in which Clyde would mangle his name!

As an addendum to my previous post, I should clarify that I was not personally advocating for the Knicks to target KAE (don’t wanna type that whole name out again or even copypasta it) I really don’t know squat about him or any of the other young, unknown SL centers out there who might be worth taking a cheap flyer on.

I was simply trying to remind folks that the first domino hasn’t even fallen yet. The available options to the Knicks are not always going to be Moses Brown, Liam Robbins, and Trey Jemison. At some point, teams facing roster crunches will be forced to part with no young no name prospects who (hopefully) have roughly similar floors and higher ceilings than that.

I mentioned KAE as one possible example, mainly because I heard someone say his name on a broadcast the other day. That said, I don’t think it totally crazy to speculate that Leon saw a potential roster crunch at center in Dallas and used the Cisse offer to force their hand a bit. Perhaps KAE is one of the Mavs surplus bigs that the Knicks are keeping an eye on.

Where have you gone, Moussa Cisse?
Knicks nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Boo hoo hoo!
What’s that you say, Mitchell Robinson?
Another big has left and gone away,
Ha, ha, hey!

So the American football championship game featured an all Spanish language halftime show whereas the corresponding show at the final World Cup football match between two Spanish speaking countries is performed entirely in English.

What a woild!