Jordan Clarkson didn’t need a tour of the market this summer. He already knew where he wanted to be.
After a season in which he averaged a career-low 17.8 minutes per game with the Knicks and sometimes slipped out of Mike Brown’s rotation, Clarkson said he never entertained outside interest as free agency opened. No meetings.
No real shopping around. Just a straightforward path back to New York.
“It was pretty chill, honestly,” Clarkson said of his latest foray into free agency. “I knew I wanted to come back here, so it was easy.
We really didn’t listen to anything else. I told my agent (Rich Paul) and everybody that I wanted to come back here, and if the money situation worked out, I wanted to come back.
Not do anything else.”
According to Stefan Bondy of The New York Post, the Knicks valued Clarkson’s presence in the locker room and the way he kept a positive approach even when his role was uneven. Now on a minimum-salary deal, the 34-year-old is expected to sit behind Landry Shamet, Jose Alvarado, and Miles McBride on the backcourt depth chart. That’s a different lane than the one he’s occupied before, but Clarkson said he’s embraced it.
“I know it’s not my regular role that I’ve played before I got here,” Clarkson said. “But it’s something I’ve fallen in love with, and I love playing my role and playing for this team and playing for each other. I think that was the biggest thing last year that I’ve learned.”
Elsewhere in the Atlantic, Joel Embiid pushed back on a report that LeBron James had “let (Joel Embiid) hear it” after Embiid was a couple minutes late for a practice. After James denied Mike Breen’s version of events, Embiid did the same, telling ESPN’s Dave McMenamin after his preseason debut on Thursday, “It sucks, but what can you do?
It’s unfortunate,” Embiid said following his preseason debut on Thursday. “I don’t know where that came from.
It never happened.” He also said he felt like an “easy target” for criticism and said the 76ers would tune out “outside noise” and stay together.
The Sixers’ G League affiliate also made a move, with the Delaware Blue Coats acquiring Dillon Jones’ returning rights from the Rip City Remix in a three-team trade on Thursday, the team announced. Jones is in camp with Philadelphia on an Exhibit 10 contract, and the Blue Coats’ move guarantees he’ll get his $91K bonus if he’s waived and then spends at least 60 days with the team’s G League affiliate.
And in Toronto, the Raptors added Kyle Anderson on a minimum-salary contract, one of the few notable roster moves they made outside the Kawhi Leonard trade. Michael Grange of Sportsnet.ca and Josh Lewenberg of TSN.ca examined the fit, noting Toronto has had Anderson on its radar for nearly a decade. The 33-year-old already has ties to the organization through his time with Leonard in San Antonio and his work with Darko Rajakovic in Memphis, and Rajakovic praised the veteran’s approach.
“He’s not shying away of from talking to the guys, and you can call that mentorship, leadership, you can call that keeping each other accountable, whatever it is,” Rajakovic said. “Kyle has always been about the right things.”
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Edgecombe has plenty of reasons to dream big in Philadelphia, where the expectations are always high and the path to contention is part of the conversation from the start. Still, his focus on the Bahamas adds another layer to his profile and underscores how much international play can matter to players whose identity is rooted as much in national pride as in league success. [Read more 🡒]