Pacôme Dadiet’s latest run of games has done little to ease the growing questions around his future with the Knicks.
The 21-year-old is heading into Year 3 in the league, but his first two seasons in New York have produced very little that stands out. That reality looks even starker now, with the Knicks set to bring back much of their championship roster and leave Dadiet fighting for any kind of role.
He got a chance to play meaningful minutes this week with Ivory Coast in World Cup qualifying, and the results were mixed at best. On Wednesday against Mali, Dadiet hit only one of his eight 3-point attempts and finished with a team-worst plus/minus of -10.
He did collect nine rebounds, including five on the offensive glass, but he remains in the kind of games where he needs to show he belongs at the NBA level. He was also the only active NBA player in that game.
Saturday brought a better night from long range in Ivory Coast’s 72-66 win over Egypt, as Dadiet went 3-for-7 from deep. But the rest of his line was rough: he made just two of eight shots inside the arc and again posted a team-worst plus/minus, this time at -14.
The same theme showed up in summer league, where third-year players are not usually expected to be out there. Dadiet played anyway, and he didn’t separate himself from the field. Over four games in July, he shot 36.4% from the field and 16.0% from 3-point range, while finishing with more than twice as many turnovers as assists.
His NBA track record still tells the same story. Dadiet has appeared in just 47 regular-season games over two seasons for the Knicks, totaling 247 minutes, most of them in garbage time. New York selected him 25th overall in the 2024 NBA Draft, a late first-round pick who arrived after agreeing to sign for 80% of the standard rookie-scale amount for that slot.
For now, the optimism is fading. Dadiet’s next chance to make a statement for Ivory Coast comes Sunday against Angola.
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