James Wiseman's Crucial Knicks Training Camp Opportunity
James Wiseman will walk into New York Knicks training camp with a minimum deal, a medical file as thick as a playbook and one crucial edge: the head coach already believes in him.
Mike Brown, now steering the reigning NBA champions, still sees something in Wiseman, according to Marc Stein of The Stein Line. That history turns what might have been a routine camp battle into something far more charged for a former No. 2 overall pick trying to keep his career alive.
This is not just another camp body. Not to Brown, anyway.
A Familiar Face, an Unfinished Story
Brown was on Steve Kerr’s staff in Golden State when Wiseman arrived with sky‑high expectations and almost no college mileage. He saw the flashes that made the Warriors gamble on him in 2020. He also watched the stops and starts that stalled everything.
Wiseman’s rookie year teased a blueprint: 11.5 points and 5.8 rebounds per game, a 7-footer gliding and finishing with ease, before a knee injury shut him down. Then came the lost season in 2021-22. No games, no rhythm, no development.
By February 2023, Golden State cut bait, sending him to Detroit. The reset didn’t stick. Another move, this time to Indiana, looked like a fresh chapter. It lasted five minutes. On opening night of the 2024-25 season, Wiseman tore his left Achilles tendon. Another year gone, another rehab, another question about what’s left.
That’s the player walking into Knicks camp: 25 years old, 7 feet tall, loaded with tools that can’t be taught and a body that keeps interrupting the story. The questions are no longer about upside. They’re about reliability, defensive feel, and whether he can string together enough healthy weeks to matter.
Brown’s belief doesn’t erase that. It does change the stakes. This is not a coach judging Wiseman off a handful of September scrimmages. This is someone who has seen the full arc — the promise and the breakdowns — and still thinks there might be a player worth betting on.
It guarantees nothing. But it guarantees Wiseman will be heard.
A Crowded Camp, a Real Opening
The Knicks have invited five veterans to camp on Exhibit 9 deals, a familiar maneuver for a contender fine‑tuning the edges of its roster. Wiseman and Drew Eubanks will scrap for minutes — and possibly a job — at center. Bruce Brown, John Konchar and Ochai Agbaji make up the perimeter group trying to wedge their way into a backcourt and wing rotation already packed with championship experience.
The math is simple. The decisions are not.
New York can carry 15 standard contracts, but all signs point to the team opening the season with 14 to manage salary and flexibility. Thirteen spots are already guaranteed. One job is realistically up for grabs when the regular season tips on Oct. 21.
There is, however, a basketball logic to giving Wiseman a long look.
Karl-Anthony Towns and Andre Drummond anchor the center rotation. That’s firepower and brute force at the top. Behind them? A void. The departures of Mitchell Robinson and Ariel Hukporti stripped away the safety net at the five. There is no established third center on the depth chart.
That’s where this battle turns serious.
Wiseman offers size, vertical spacing and rebounding in a frame that still jumps off the floor. If he can stay healthy and stay locked in defensively, he gives New York a different kind of insurance — a long, athletic big who can run, finish and change shots.
Eubanks brings something else: predictability. Eight years in the league, a known defensive baseline, a big who will set screens, rebound, compete physically and rarely surprise a coach in the wrong way. The ceiling is lower. The trust factor is higher.
The choice at center becomes a referendum on risk tolerance. Do the Knicks chase upside with Wiseman, hoping Brown can coax out the version Golden State once imagined? Or do they lean on Eubanks’ reliability to stabilize the back end of the rotation?
And that’s only one side of the ledger.
Keeping Bruce Brown, Konchar or Agbaji would tilt the roster in another direction, shoring up the perimeter with defense, toughness and another playoff-tested option on the wing. In a league that keeps shrinking and switching, that argument will have its own advocates in the room.
A Template From Last Year
New York has been here before.
Last fall, the Knicks used camp to stage a similar audition, bringing in Landry Shamet, Malcolm Brogdon, Garrison Mathews, Matt Ryan and Alex Len. It looked like a standard veteran cattle call.
Then the season happened.
Brogdon’s unexpected retirement cracked the door open. Shamet walked through it. He played his way not just onto the roster but into the championship rotation, hitting shots, spacing the floor and earning the trust of the coaching staff when the games truly mattered. The payoff was significant: a four-year, $24 million contract that would have sounded far-fetched when camp opened.
That’s the blueprint Wiseman is chasing now. Different position, different story, same opportunity: arrive on an Exhibit 9, leave with a role.
Brown’s belief gives Wiseman a head start, not a free pass. The coach knows exactly what the big man can do in space, how he can finish above the rim, how he can tilt a game with pure physical presence. He also knows how quickly it can all disappear with a mistimed landing or a slow defensive read.
For Wiseman, this camp isn’t about proving he was worth the No. 2 pick four years ago. That chapter is gone. This is about something smaller and more urgent: can he stay on the floor, anchor a second unit, defend with discipline, and accept a limited role on a team that expects to play into June?
If he can, opening night at Madison Square Garden might bring more than just another comeback. It might bring a reunion — and a second chance that finally sticks.
