The New York Knicks could look to add frontcourt depth in the wake of Mitchell Robinson’s departure by targeting Denver Nuggets center Jonas Valan\u010di\u016bnas.<\/p>\n
SNY’s Ian Begley reported Thursday that Valan\u010di\u016bnas is “among centers on [the Knicks’] radar.”<\/p>\n
According to Begley, the Knicks expressed interest in Valan\u010di\u016bnas ahead of the 2024 season before he signed a multi-year deal with the New Orleans Pelicans.<\/p>\n
ESPN’s\u00a0Shams Charania<\/a>\u00a0reported Wednesday\u00a0Valan\u010di\u016bnas is expected to receive interest from multiple other teams after being reportedly<\/a> waived by the Nuggets.<\/p>\n BasketNews<\/a> also reported Valan\u010di\u016bnas has received interest from the Lithuanian club \u017dalgiris Kaunas.<\/p>\n The news comes after the Knicks lost Robinson to the Boston Celtics in free agency before signing Andre Drummond to a one-year veteran’s minimum deal.<\/p>\n Begley<\/a> reported last week the Knicks see Valan\u010di\u016bnas “as a potential third center” behind Karl-Anthony Towns and Drummond.<\/p>\n The Athletic’s James L. Edwards III<\/a> similarly previously named Valan\u010di\u016bnas as a name “to watch for” with the Knicks.<\/p>\n The Nuggets acquired Valan\u010di\u016bnas from the Sacramento Kings in a trade last July.<\/p>\n Valan\u010di\u016bnas went on to average 8.7 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.2 assists through 65 games, mostly coming off the bench before falling out of the rotation altogether late in his lone season with the Nuggets.<\/p>\n He shot 58.2 percent from the field, 30.8 percent from deep and 60.2 perent from the two-point range during his final season in Denver.<\/p>\n Valan\u010di\u016bnas was waived just before $10 million in salary guarantees kicked in Wednesday, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks<\/a>. He is still owed $2 million from the Nuggets next season.<\/p>\n Cutting his contract and signing Marvin Bagley III to a veteran minimum deal allowed the Nuggets to save enough cap space to stay under the second luxury tax apron for now.<\/p>\n Team owner James Dolan said<\/a> in June he doesn’t plan to go into the second apron, which Spotrac<\/a> reports the Knicks are just $5.7 million below as of Thursday.<\/p>\n Whether Valan\u010di\u016bnas is considering playing in Europe and whether he is willing to sign a veteran minimum contract could both play a role in the likelihood the veteran big man ends up in Manhattan next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Knicks could look to add frontcourt depth in the wake of Mitchell Robinson’s departure by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-790667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}