The Knicks’ 148-98 preseason loss in Toronto dropped them to 0-4, but with their top-seven players out, the night was really about the handful of active bodies trying to make a case. For some, that case got stronger. For others, not much changed at all.
Nickel was the clearest stock-up name, even if the box score wasn’t pretty. He finished 0-for-9 from deep in 21 minutes after taking nine threes, and that kind of line is never going to help anybody.
Still, the Knicks had to like the way he played through it. His jumper looked loose and natural from the start, and he didn’t seem rattled by the misses.
If anything, he kept firing with the same confidence.
That showed up on the makes, too. A pull-up 18-footer and an elbow three in the second half were both clean.
More than that, he flashed a few details that suggest a player the Knicks want to keep developing: drawing a shooting foul on a drive, scrapping for points on hustle, and chasing down a loose ball after Kevin McCullar’s pass ahead to a streaking Ochai Agbaji was deflected. Nickel was the only Knick up the floor to keep the possession alive, and it ended with a bucket.
None of it changed the fact that he’s on a two-way contract and Tuesday’s result didn’t matter, but it did show a player willing to let it fly and keep competing when it would have been easy to drift.
Drew Eubanks’ night landed in a different place. His showing wasn’t disastrous, but it didn’t feel like anything the Knicks hadn’t already seen.
He was physical, as usual, including on a hard but legal screen that freed Jose Alvarado for two. But the limitations were there, too.
He’s not as long as James Wiseman or Tony Bradley, and at times he made himself smaller than he already is by bringing the ball down around the rim.
One sequence summed it up. Eubanks jumped to catch a pass a couple of feet from the basket with Raptors around him, but he brought the ball down, got it tied up in traffic, and the possession ended with him taking a tougher shot that was blocked.
Compare that with Wiseman’s work around the rim: an alley-oop with Alvarado and a three-point play off a lob from Miles McBride, both finished by catching the ball high and keeping it there. That’s the small stuff that matters when jobs are on the line, and Eubanks didn’t really move the needle Tuesday.
Wiseman, meanwhile, gave the Knicks plenty to think about on offense. He played 24 minutes, the third-most by a Knick this preseason, and the production was easy to see: eight shots, seven made, 18 points, 10 rebounds.
The Knicks clearly wanted more of him, and he delivered more. He was one of only two Knicks, along with Mohamed Diawara, to make at least half of his shots, and he stood out in a game where the team didn’t have much going.
But the defense remains the question. Wiseman has missed major time in the past with a torn right knee meniscus and a torn left Achilles, and he isn’t the kind of center you want chasing plays 25 feet from the basket.
Against Toronto, he was beaten more than once because his drop coverage was too deep on pick-and-rolls. New York needs him to protect the paint, but there’s a wide gap between that and what he’s shown away from the rim.
The Knicks don’t need him to be Mitchell Robinson. They don’t even need him to be Andre Drummond.
They do need him to not be Enes Kanter-defensively, anyway.
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