At 20-8, the New York Knicks are off to a stellar 2025-26 season start. They’re currently the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, and are fielding perhaps the East’s most talented roster.

All-NBA Knicks standouts Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns have picked up where they left off last year, while new head coach Mike Brown has empowered All-Defensive forwards Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby, plus starting guard Josh Hart, to take a bigger role in his revamped Knicks offense.

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New York signed three key free agents during the offseason to shore up its bench depth: returning guard Landry Shamet and new additions Jordan Clarkson and Guerschon Yabusele.

Shamet and Clarkson have proven themselves to be useful contributors for New York, but Yabusele has been a bit of a bust.

Inked to a two-season, $11.3 million bi-annual exception deal, the power forward has recorded averages of a scant 3.0 points on a .394/.306/.600 slash line and 2.2 boards a night.

Understandably, per James L. Edwards III of The Athletic, the Knicks would be happy to cut ties with the 6-foot-7 Frenchman via trade.

Edwards has supplied a list of several intriguing potential trade pieces the Knicks might be able to extract in a theoretical Yabusele deal. Chicago Bulls shooting guard Ayo Dosunmu, in the midst of a career scoring year off the bench, is floated as a possibility.

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While Edwards concedes that Dosunmu is the better player, he opines that New Orleans Pelicans backup off-guard Jose Alvarado — a frisky, if undersized, perimeter defender — could be the easier player to bring aboard. And as a bonus: he’d be playing for his hometown team in New York.

“The Knicks’ already-small backcourt wouldn’t get any bigger by adding Alvarado, but he would check a box or two with his play,” Edwards writes. “Alvarado is on the books for $4.5 million this season and has a player option for the same amount next season. New York could get the money to work with Alvarado easier than with Dosunmu and has the second-round picks necessary to get a deal done if the Pelicans were interested in moving on from the veteran point guard.”

New Orleans has quietly gotten healthy (well, aside from All-Star Dejounte Murray, who could be out for much of the year with an Achilles tendon tear), and is now on a surprise five-game win streak. Still, the Pelicans are just 8-22 on the year, and theoretically close to missing out on a play-in tournament appearance.

In 28 healthy games for New Orleans, the 6-footer out of Georgia Tech has been averaging 8.4 points on .430/.370/.810 shooting splits, 3.3 dimes and 2.8 boads.

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