The Knicks are giving James Wiseman something he hasn’t really had much of in his NBA career: a clean lane to simply be a big man off the bench.
That’s the job now. With Karl-Anthony Towns and Andre Drummond ahead of him on the depth chart, Wiseman is in line to handle the kind of minutes Ariel Hukporti filled last season.
It’s a very different setup from the one that once came with the weight of Golden State’s “two timelines” idea, when the Warriors took him No. 2 overall in the 2021 draft and asked him to carry far more than he was ready for. But even with all that baggage, the appeal is still obvious.
He’s 25. He’s huge.
And no other Knick can say both of those things. Over his career, Wiseman has posted averages of 17 points, 10 rebounds and 56% shooting per-36 minutes.
On paper, that looks like a player who can do the basic work required for this role.
The catch is that “per-36” has to do a lot of the selling here. Wiseman has barely played.
He has logged only 63 minutes over the past two seasons combined. For his career, he’s averaged 571 minutes a year, which is only a little more than Hukporti’s 498 last season.
He’s also finished every season as a net negative in defensive box plus-minus, and while the Knicks probably didn’t bring him in for his defense, that part of the profile still matters.
The production story is uneven, too. Wiseman was supposed to become a scorer and rebounder once he settled into the league, but the only category he has ever finished top-20 in is turnovers, both per game and per 100 possessions. He has 69 more career turnovers than assists.
Still, the numbers don’t tell the whole story with Wiseman.
One part of the explanation is injuries, and that’s also part of why the Knicks are willing to take a look now that he’s healthy. He has never really had enough uninterrupted time to build momentum.
As a rookie, he started Golden State’s first 16 games, then went to the bench for three weeks, came back for three weeks, missed three games, started the next 10, and then tore his right meniscus. That ended his Warriors run and wiped out the final 19 games of that season.
After a setback in rehab, he missed the entire 2021-22 season.
The injury list kept going. In December 2022, he sprained his ankle before being traded to Detroit, where he started the final 22 games of the 2022-23 season.
Since then, he has not played more than 20 minutes in any game. A torn left Achilles in the Pistons’ 2024-25 opener cost him the entire season, and his 2025-26 season ended before Christmas.
There’s also the money angle, and that helps explain why this opportunity matters. Wiseman earned $40 million on his four-year rookie deal, but he’ll finish this season having made only a little over $4 million since then.
That alone gives him reason to push. So does the contract he’s on now: an Exhibit 9 deal, the same type John Konchar and Drew Eubanks have, which is non-guaranteed unless he makes the opening night roster and then becomes a one-year veteran’s minimum.
If he’s still on the roster Jan. 10, 2027, it becomes fully guaranteed.
The Knicks are not asking him to become Jermaine O’Neal. They don’t need that kind of outcome.
What they need is a serviceable bench big, and there are plenty of recent examples of players who needed four or five years before they really found their footing. If Wiseman turns into something like Goga Bitadze, Paul Reed, Neemias Queta or Luke Garza, that would work just fine.
That’s the level the Knicks are hoping for.
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