{"id":655331,"date":"2026-05-07T10:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655331\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:54:21","slug":"next-star-powers-knicks-to-playoff-victories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655331\/","title":{"rendered":"Next Star powers Knicks to Playoff victories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former NBL Next Star Ariel Hukporti has played a key role in helping the New York Knicks move to a 2-0 lead in their Playoff Series with Philadelphia.<\/p>\n<p>In Game 1 of the pair\u2019s Semi-Final Series, the former Melbourne United big man tallied 4 points (2\/2 from the field), 9 rebounds and 2 blocks in 17 minutes on the floor, to help New York win 137-98.<\/p>\n<p>Hukporti was rewarded for his strong play with extra game time, with fellow big men Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson only playing 20 and 12 minutes respectively.<\/p>\n<p>Then in Game 2, the German added 2 points and 3 boards, as the Knicks won 108-102 at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n<p>The Series now moves to Philadelphia, with Game 3 on Friday from 9am AEST.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778151261_685_69d47a153353ed2bdf7cd807_Article Banner_1920x250 (1).jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NBL Next Star Ariel Hukporti has played a key role in helping the New York Knicks move&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-655331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655331","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=655331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}