{"id":52300,"date":"2025-08-08T06:57:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T06:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/52300\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T06:57:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T06:57:06","slug":"knicks-former-7-foot-1-center-leaves-nba-to-sign-contract-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/52300\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks’ former 7-foot-1 center leaves NBA to sign contract in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Knicks’ former 7-foot-1 center leaves NBA to sign contract in Israel<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a><\/p>\n

His name might not ring a bell to many Knicks fans.<\/p>\n

But the diehard Knickerbocker supporters will remember Dmytro Skapintsev.<\/p>\n

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The 7-foot-1 Ukrainian center played two games for the Knicks on a two-way contract during the 2023-24 season.<\/p>\n

He has spent most of his time in the G League.<\/p>\n

Skapintsev played two seasons with the Westchester Knicks before splitting 2024-25 between the Maine Celtics and the Rip City Remix.<\/p>\n

Now, he’s heading overseas.<\/p>\n

Skapintsev has signed a one-year contract with Hapoel Jerusalem, the Israeli team announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He put up solid numbers in the G League to earn the opportunity.<\/p>\n

In 2024-25, Skapintsev averaged 8.8 points, 7.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 blocks per game at the G League level.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Warriors, Bulls can solve Kuminga, Giddey problems with one trade<\/a><\/p>\n

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At 27 years old, this is probably a chance for Skapintsev to prove he can play at a high level in a strong league. It may get him one more NBA opportunity.<\/p>\n

His path to the NBA was quirky, because although Skapintsev is from Ukraine, he actually played his college basketball at Cal State-Northridge.<\/p>\n

The Knicks eventually gave him that two-way deal after Summer League in 2023. He didn’t prove he could stick around at the NBA level, despite immense size and intriguing skill.<\/p>\n

His basketball journey still likely has a lot of years in it, even if they aren’t in the NBA.<\/p>\n

Skapintsev may go down as that guy who made two brief Knicks appearances, or he may find a way to comeback to the league at some point down the road. For now, he heads to Israel.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0LeBron James could turn into NBA’s biggest competition with $200 million from Saudi Arabia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knicks’ former 7-foot-1 center leaves NBA to sign contract in Israel originally appeared on The Sporting News His…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,43530,43820,22134,34603,12845,20440,7896,43821,590,85,43819],"class_list":{"0":"post-52300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-dmytro-skapintsev","11":"tag-g-league","12":"tag-giddey","13":"tag-hapoel-jerusalem","14":"tag-knicks","15":"tag-kuminga","16":"tag-lebron-james","17":"tag-maine-celtics","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-westchester-knicks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}