{"id":870811,"date":"2026-10-04T20:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T20:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/870811\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T20:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T20:06:16","slug":"knicks-notes-diawara-guards-alvarado-preseason-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/870811\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks Notes: Diawara, Guards, Alvarado, Preseason Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Knicks are hoping 2025 second-round pick Mohamed Diawara<\/a> will continue to improve in his second season after a solid rookie campaign in which he received rotation minutes at times, writes Jared Schwartz of The New York Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At 6\u20199\u2033 with a 7\u20194\u2033 wingspan, Diawara has excellent size for a forward. Teammate OG Anunoby<\/a> believes the 21-year-old has \u201cendless upside\u201d and is a \u201creally versatile player.\u201d Head coach Mike Brown has seen some growth from Diawara, but he wants him to stay hungry.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, you could see he was a little jittery when he was out there,\u201d Brown said Saturday, \u201cbecause he didn\u2019t quite know what to do, and he knew when he did it, he just had to go hard. So a lot of times, he would just play at one speed. There\u2019s a comfort level now, so his cadence is better, especially offensively.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis ability to communicate on the floor is at a little bit of a higher level, because he has a better feel not just offensively, but defensively \u2014 not just what he should do, but what he should be telling his teammates to do, especially if he\u2019s on the backside or bottom side of the defense, because he sees everything in front of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s one of those players that needs to take a step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diawara re-signed with the Knicks on a four-year, $11.2MM<\/a> contract as a restricted free agent this offseason.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great. That was the goal. Now we\u2019re back to work,\u201d said Diawara, who added that he\u2019s fully recovered from the finger injury he suffered at Summer League (Twitter<\/a> links<\/a> via James L. Edwards III of The Athletic).<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more on the Knicks:<\/p>\n

How many minutes will smaller guards like Miles McBride<\/a> and Jose Alvarado<\/a> receive this season? Kristian Winfield of The New York Daily News<\/a> explores that question, noting that the team had strong net ratings when one of those two guards was paired with Jalen Brunson<\/a> in both the regular season and the playoffs. They also played well together in a small sample size. \u201cThey may be small with us looking at them, but they bring a level of toughness, so their drop-off isn\u2019t as huge as most people think based on their height,\u201d Brown said.
\nAlvarado said he prioritized returning to his hometown team this offseason and is happy a deal came together, Winfield writes<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s big. Just gave that comfort, just that comfort that you stay here and just keep going forward and now I\u2019m just focused on the season,\u201d said Alvarado, who signed a three-year, $14.4MM deal<\/a> with the Knicks.
\nThe Knicks\u2019 preseason opener is on Monday against Philadelphia. Brown says the starters will play, \u201cbut not much,\u201d according to Schwartz<\/a>. Instead, the team is focused on evaluating its young players and the training camp invitees battling for a roster spot. \u201cAny time you have new guys, because we have new guys on this team that we\u2019re trying to mix in with guys that have been here, you\u2019re gonna make some mistakes,\u201d Brown said after practice Saturday. \u201cI\u2019m 100 percent OK with that. The little things I\u2019m looking for are, when someone makes a mistake, how quickly do they try to make up for the mistake? I\u2019m huge on next-play speed. There\u2019s gonna be a lot of mistakes, but are guys gonna drop their heads or look confused or hesitate?\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Knicks are hoping 2025 second-round pick Mohamed Diawara will continue to improve in his second season after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":870812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[45193,62394,5793,355,19560,99],"class_list":["post-870811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-jose-alvarado","tag-miles-mcbride","tag-mohamed-diawara","tag-nba","tag-og-anunoby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=870811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/870811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=870811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=870811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=870811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}