The Knicks have spent the offseason staring at a problem that got sharper when Mitchell Robinson and Ariel Hukporti both left for the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. That pair of departures stripped New York down to one center on the roster, and it put real pressure on how the team would fill out the middle.
Andre Drummond was the first move, giving the Knicks Philadelphia’s second-string center from last season. Then Nick Richards, the last center on the market expected to land a fully-guaranteed deal, chose the Miami Heat. That left New York heading toward a training camp fight for its final roster spot.
Now, more than two months into free agency, the market has shifted hard. There are still more players looking for guaranteed jobs than there are actual openings, and that imbalance is starting to push names toward non-guaranteed deals.
That’s why SNY’s report that Drew Eubanks is on the Knicks’ radar matters. It’s the kind of free-agent storyline that usually only shows up when teams are asking players to come in and earn everything.
For the Knicks, any center brought into camp is really chasing the job Hukporti held last season. If New York is banking on Drummond being more available than Robinson - who sat out regular-season back-to-backs - then the team may not need much from its third-string center anyway. But the larger issue remains the same: Karl-Anthony Towns needs more help.
Towns has led the NBA in offensive fouls for three straight seasons, and the Knicks already know how they want to attack that problem. Drummond could turn out to be a strong answer in place of Robinson, but New York still needs enough depth behind him to matter.
Eubanks would be part of that conversation after appearing in 42 games for the Sacramento Kings last season. Hukporti played in 54 games for the Knicks. The gap between them showed up most clearly on defense.
Eubanks posted a -1.3 defensive estimated plus-minus, which put him in the NBA’s 11th percentile overall. Hukporti was on the other end of the spectrum, landing in the league’s 98th percentile of defenders according to Dunks & Threes. That kind of stat can be shaky, but centers tend to produce the clearest read because so much of their value is tied to the way they affect the paint and the scheme around them.
Eubanks’ best defensive season by that metric came in 2023-24, when he played 75 games for the Phoenix Suns and finished with a D-EPM of 0.0. That placed him in the 60th percentile.
The Knicks are not trying to find the next Willis Reed in this market. They just need someone who can step in and be useful from the start of the season if called upon.
Eubanks is simply the first center name to emerge as a possible participant in a camp battle, and he almost certainly won’t be the last.
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Nickels hold-up is part of a larger pattern for the front office, which has often taken its time before finalizing camp decisions. Leon Rose could again leave the last few roster moves for later in the preseason, as he did around this time last year, when the Knicks waited until close to camp to make a batch of additions. [Read more 🡒]