NEW YORK — James Wiseman arrived in the NBA as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 draft, a physical specimen the Golden State Warriors projected as the next great center. Six years later, Wiseman is competing for a training camp spot with the defending champion New York Knicks on a non-guaranteed Exhibit 9 contract, the lowest rung of NBA employment short of an open tryout.
The Knicks signed Wiseman, former NBA champion Bruce Brown, wing Ochai Agbaji, shooting guard John Konchar, and center Drew Eubanks to Exhibit 9 deals ahead of training camp, Bleacher Report confirmed. Five veterans. Two open roster spots. The competition starts immediately.
The stakes are filtered through what the Knicks have become. They are the defending champions, coming off a June title run in which Jalen Brunson dropped 45 points in the clinching game against the San Antonio Spurs, delivering their first championship in 53 years. Every decision New York makes heading into camp is filtered through one question: does this player make the champions harder to beat?
For Brown, the answer is probably yes. He played all 82 games for the Denver Nuggets last season, averaging 7.9 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.0 steals per game, the kind of versatile, defensively reliable production that championship rosters absorb easily. Brown won a title with the Nuggets in 2023. He understands what the infrastructure of a contender looks like. That familiarity with winning environments is exactly the intangible New York’s front office values on the margins of a roster.
Wiseman is the more uncertain proposition, and the more compelling one. In Golden State, he was never given the sustained minutes to prove the Warriors’ projection right. Injuries interrupted him repeatedly; he appeared in just 60 games for the franchise before being traded to Detroit in 2023. With the Pistons, he found something resembling stability, 87 games over the following season, averaging 8.6 points and 6.1 rebounds in under 20 minutes per night. But Detroit was not contending for anything that required him to be great. It required him to show up.
The Indiana Pacers signed him to a two-year contract before the 2024-25 season, and Wiseman tore his Achilles in the season opener. He never played again for Indiana. NBC Sports Bay Area reported that Wiseman was eventually traded to Toronto, where he was waived. At 25, with three franchises behind him and a complete Achilles rupture on his medical chart, Wiseman is running out of places willing to offer him a genuine chance.
The Exhibit 9 contract Wiseman signed carries no guarantee. If the Knicks release him before the regular season begins, he leaves with nothing beyond the camp stipend. If they keep him, the deal converts. All of the leverage sits with New York.
For Agbaji and the others, the conditions are identical. Agbaji, 25, was a first-round pick who showed shooting flashes with Utah and Cleveland without fully establishing himself as a rotation piece. Konchar and Eubanks are career depth players with enough NBA experience to contribute without requiring significant acclimation. Nobody here is arriving with leverage. That is the point.
The Knicks’ roster entering camp is settled at its core. Brunson leads it. OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges anchor the defensive wings. Karl-Anthony Towns provides spacing at the five. Drummond is already aboard. What the two remaining slots need is reliability, players who execute within Tom Thibodeau’s system and are physically ready when a rotation player misses time.
Brown earns one of those spots if the film from last season reflects his real value. Wiseman earns one if the Achilles is genuinely behind him. The champion Knicks have earned the right to apply a high bar, and a training camp full of veterans willing to fight for it is exactly how defending champions maintain their edge rather than coast on their title.
What nobody knows yet is whether Wiseman’s body has given him back enough of what it took. He and the Knicks are both about to find out.
