Three Truths From Knicks Summer League

The New York Knicks’ prospects made the most of their time on America’s playground.

Metropolitan Summer League action has wrapped, and the Knicks can hang their heads relatively high despite being denied a knockout round visit for the second sraight season: the baby Knicks lost their first two contests but wrapped things up on a three-game winning streak, improving summer boss Dice Yoshimoto’s record to 12-9 in four seasons at the amateur helm.

Evaluating Summer League action can be a fruitless, prematurely euphoric chore considering that most games serve as de facto G League previews rather than setting the stage for this fall’s affairs. For the Knicks, however, three rational truths emerged from the relative tryouts, as they tend to do each early preseason …

From the get-go, it was clear that the Knicks had plans for Tyler Kolek, who likely would’ve been a first-round choice if not for late injuries. New York nonetheless sent three picks to Portland for the right to obtain Kolek’s services, which required a four-slot jump. Once he was in their grasp, the Knicks gave him over $6 million in guarantees, a salary almost unheard of for a second-round choice.

Drafting/trading up for Kolek, well-versed in winning at Madison Square Garden thanks to his time at Marquette, was undoubtedly a luxury move for the Knicks, a proverbial “best player available” opportunity trading only to contending teams. With the Knicks’ backcourt picture well-spoken for … and head coach Tom Thibodeau’s reluctance to immediately throw rookies into the fire … Kolek’s chances of contributing in Manhattan seemed remote at best.

While there are hardly any guarantees, Kolek’s Summer League slate hints that he might be able to immediately flip at least some of the Knicks’ fortunes: Kolek immediately established as one of the top distributors and table-setters in Las Vegas, dishing out 35 assists and standing as one of five participants with a minimum of four games played to toss at least seven a game.

The Knicks were second-to-last in assists per game last season and their pace ranked in a similar spot (which proved to be a deadly combo when they played the second-paced Pacers). It’d be foolish to presume that Kolek would completely repair those issues but it’s hard to doubt that he could at least put a dent in them.

If worst came to absolute worst, Kolek would also give the Knicks a little extra confidence if they had to deal away any of their seemingly endless backcourt assets.

If the Knicks make one more move this offseason, it’ll more than likely obtain a backup center, especially one of the traditional variety.

The position remains understocked as August looms: Mitchell Robinson is set to continue his Manhattan reign but he’s coming off ankle issues that ate away at more than half of his season. Jericho Sims is the current understudy despite struggling to generate any lasting aura in the primary rotation.

Beyond the backcourt, the Knicks’ most noteworthy contributors were their paint-dwellers, as Ariel Hukporti and Dmytro Skapintsev regularly flirted with double-doubles in their five games. Both are traditional centers who might need to develop a little more to generate any lasting professional staying power. For now, though, they fit in well with the Knicks’ established interior affairs headlined by Robinson, perhaps the headliner of the traditional centers, an endangered species in the NBA.

Hukporti, the NBA’s active Mr. Irrelevant as the 58th and final pick of last month’s draft, feels destined for Westchester as the signer of a two-way deal, but Skapintsev, a White Plains/Las Vegas mainstay, feels like he’s ready to land an extended opportunity come the preseason. The Ukranian-born big man was second in both Summer League scoring and rebounding this year … trailing only Hukporti in the latter category.

Selecting Pacome Dadiet with the long-awaited final asset of the Kristaps Porzingis trade with the Dallas Mavericks continues to stand as one of the more perplexing, if not multi-pronged, moves of the Knicks’ offseason.

It’d be gregariously silly to place Victor Wembanyama-style expectations on Dadiet, but he’s certainly not on a Frederic Weis pace: he’s in the Knicks system and feels poised to help out New York at some point, be it in Manhattan or White Plains.

But the Summer League slate proved that he still has much to learn: the 18-year-old was willing to throw his body around when it came to grabbing rebounds but he shot less than 30 percent from the field and his PER ranked dead last among all of the Knicks’ Vegas participants.

Dadiet insisted, perhaps surprisingly, that he intended to press on professionally rather than spend more time in Europe. His willingness to throw his 6-8 frame around will land him admirers in Thibodeau’s inner circle but the Vegas vacation proves he’s still a little too far off from NBA action.

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