After Day 2 of training camp in Tarrytown on Wednesday, Knicks head coach Mike Brown said the team is still trying to round out its center rotation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking for bigs,\u201d said Brown. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at that [center] position heavily.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Knicks notably lost backup center and defensive anchor Mitchell Robinson<\/a> in free agency, a casualty of the second apron \u2014 the CBA threshold that punishes teams whose payrolls cross it. Robinson joined the Boston Celtics for what amounted to a 5.3% raise on the four-year, $60 million deal he signed with the Knicks. New York replaced him with veteran center and Mount Vernon native Andre Drummond<\/a>, who signed at the veteran\u2019s minimum, as the first center off the bench behind All-Star big man Karl-Anthony Towns.<\/p>\n The Knicks also lost former second-round pick Ariel Hukporti, who joined the Philadelphia 76ers. The team now has just two centers with guaranteed roster spots. The others \u2014 Tony Bradley, James Wiseman and Drew Eubanks \u2014 are fighting for the team\u2019s final minimum-salary slot beneath the second apron, a threshold owner James Dolan has said the organization will not cross.<\/p>\n The Knicks added Bradley, 28, to their training camp roster for Wednesday\u2019s practice after waiving John Konchar and N\u2019Faly Dante. The former Atlanta Hawks and Indiana Pacers big man has played against the Knicks in each of the last two postseasons.<\/p>\n \u201cTony\u2019s a veteran guy that\u2019s still in his prime and has a good feel for the game, knows how to play the game the right way and he\u2019s hurt us in the past. And, to be honest, when a guy hurts you in the past, you tend to remember him more than others,\u201d said Brown. \u201cSo to be able to add him to camp was a positive for us because, again, I said this last year: KAT has one of the most [difficult] spots out of everybody because I want to move him around when I play him at center. I want to play him at power forward, and at power forward, one through four is interchangeable.<\/p>\n \u201cSame with OG [Anunoby]. OG we put him at the 5 last year. We probably will do it a little bit more this year as well. But to be able to do that, you\u2019ve gotta have enough centers around on the team, so having Tony here with his skill set and feel is definitely a blessing because we\u2019re looking at that position heavily.\u201d<\/p>\n The Knicks are also monitoring the situation in Dallas, where the Mavericks must make a decision regarding Moussa Cisse, the 6-11, 24-year-old big man they signed to an offer sheet during the offseason. In that offer sheet, the Knicks gave Cisse an Oct. 1 guarantee date for the first year of his contract. The Mavericks, however, only have one open roster spot, and Cisse is competing against longtime veteran center Dwight Powell.<\/p>\n Should the Mavericks choose to keep Cisse and waive Powell, the 35-year-old veteran has played in 60 or more games in eight of his last 11 seasons and continues to be a productive player even into the tail end of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Day 2 of training camp in Tarrytown on Wednesday, Knicks head coach Mike Brown said the team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3768],"tags":[3845,7,988,304,3357,1247,6,1136,191,3810,3806,14218,25812],"class_list":["post-847713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-knicks","tag-andre-drummond","tag-basketball","tag-center","tag-knicks","tag-mike-brown","tag-mitchell-robinson","tag-nba","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkknicks","tag-tony-bradley","tag-training-camp"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117361429933722929","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}