The Knicks are not asking Andre Drummond to walk in and become a scoring piece. What they want is much simpler, and a lot more useful when games tighten up: make contact, chase down the miss and extend the possession.
That kind of work doesn’t always show up loudly, but it matters. A big body who can clean the glass can swing a game without ever taking over the offense, especially for a second unit that needs someone willing to do the dirty stuff.
Drummond’s numbers from last season back up that role. He averaged 6.4 points and 8.4 rebounds, production that suggests he can still give a bench group some muscle without forcing the offense to revolve around him.
Rebounding is the sort of thing teams tend to notice only when it’s gone. A club can look fine for most of the night and still lose because it surrendered a couple of extra possessions late. That is where Drummond’s value comes in.
He has built his career on tracking the ball and making opposing bigs work. For the Knicks, that becomes especially useful when the lineup goes smaller or when foul trouble starts thinning out the frontcourt.
There will be nights when the matchup trims his minutes. There will also be nights when New York just needs a veteran center who can make the paint and the glass uncomfortable for everybody else.
He is not being brought in to fix every issue up front. But a dependable reserve rebounder is exactly the kind of piece good teams are happy to have, even if the appreciation shows up months later, after he has already helped save a few games nobody remembers in January.
In Other News...
Knicks Have A Deuce McBride Decision That Could Loom Fast
The Knicks offseason business is not done, but one of the quieter questions on the roster has moved to the front burner. Deuce McBride established himself as a valuable rotation guard last season, averaging 12.0 points, 2.6 assists and 2.4 rebounds in 41 games, and his standing inside the organization has only grown as New York continues sorting out its future payroll and lineup decisions.
Stefan Bondy reported that the Knicks are unlikely to extend McBride, along with Karl-Anthony Towns and Josh Hart, before the season begins, which leaves McBride in a more fluid spot than a dependable bench piece usually prefers. New York is still weighing whether to treat him as part of the long-term core or keep him in play as a possible trade asset once the season gets rolling, a choice that could come into focus faster than expected. [Read more 🡒]
Knicks Just Got A Lot More Pressure On Karl-Anthony Towns
Victor Wembanyamas new deal in San Antonio landed at 25 percent of the salary cap, a notable decision because he could have chased the 30 percent supermax after making an All-NBA Team. For the Knicks, that kind of number matters far beyond the Spurs, because every major contract on the books shapes how much flexibility the front office has when it starts mapping out the next few seasons.
Karl-Anthony Towns now sits at the center of that math in New York. The Knicks may end up negotiating with a player who has plenty of leverage and a future payday in mind, even as the team tries to preserve room for other key pieces, and the cap squeeze around Towns is only getting harder to ignore. [Read more 🡒]
Former Knicks Champion Could Extend A Rare Streak In Philadelphia
Dillon Jones has a chance to keep an unusual run going after landing in Philadelphia, where his next stop comes with a roster built around LeBron James, Joel Embiid, Jaylen Brown and Tyrese Maxey. For a player who has already been part of title teams, the setup is at least intriguing enough to warrant a closer look from Knicks fans who remember his place on the clubs 2026 championship roster.
Jones arrives after back-to-back championships, first with Oklahoma City in 2025 and then with New York the following year, a rare kind of rsum for a player still looking to carve out his next opportunity. The question now is whether that momentum carries into Philly and whether his new situation can turn a brief stop into something that keeps the streak alive. [Read more 🡒]