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Knicks coach Mike Brown had tremendous praise for Bruce Brown, whom the team waived on Saturday to bring the roster to 14 players.
“Bruce, he’s a winner,” Brown said after practice Sunday. “He shows a level of toughness and versatility — not just defensively, he can guard one through four, but even offensively, he can initiate the offense. Our point guard’s not one that has to come down every play and break his guy down and make the game easier for everyone else. We have a system where we play out of concepts, and Bruce is good enough to initiate the offense, or he’s good enough to be off the ball. So he fits in with how we want to play on both ends, while giving us versatility on both ends. Having a chance to get to know him, he seems like a good guy. He seems like he knows a lot of our guys because he was in the same [draft] class as a few of them. So it was tough from that standpoint.”
The Knicks only have room to keep 14 players and stay under the second apron. They wanted to keep both James Wiseman and Bruce Brown, but were unable to make a trade to unload a player — either Pacôme Dadiet or Tyler Kolek — in order to make room for Brown.
And with the Knicks needing a third center behind Karl-Anthony Towns and Andre Drummond, Wiseman won the roster spot over Brown. It is possible the Knicks eventually find a deal and are able to bring back Brown.
“When you have a guy that’s 25 years old, that has the length and the athleticism and the talent as a James Wiseman, because KAT’s not athletic like that and Andre was once that, he still has some of it. But to have that at 25 years old, especially with where we’re at as a group, you look for guys that coulda, shoulda, but at his age maybe he still can be a coulda, shoulda,” Brown said. “That vertical threat at the rim, the vertical threat defensively, how good he runs, you welcome that at his size and age and athleticism.”
Josh Hart, who missed the Knicks preseason finale against the Raptors on Thursday due to a sore right ankle, practiced on Sunday.
He said the ankle is feeling “solid.”
OG Anunoby appreciated a New Jersey fan’s viral Halloween decoration recreating his iconic game-winning tip-in in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.
“That was amazing,” Anunoby said. “That was super cool. Very creative. It was really cool.”