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The Knicks have depth, but they’re still figuring out how to use it.
The starting five, Mitchell Robinson, Jose Alvarado, and Landry Shamet are solidified. When Deuce McBride eventually returns from his sports hernia, he will be too. The battle for the ninth or tenth man, though, is up in the air.
On one end, you have exciting, 19-year-old rookie Mo Diawara, who has shown tremendous flashes on both ends just a few months after not being good enough to go top 50 in the NBA Draft. With his recent three-point outburst, he’s becoming more and more of a viable role player as a rookie.
But on the other end, you have another young player, but one who’s more experienced and is looking to make an impact in a new situation. Jeremy Sochan is still only 22, but fell out of favor in San Antonio and elected to sign in New York after being released mid-season.
These two are on the Knicks’ rotation bubble, with players like Tyler Kolek, Ariel Hukporti, and Kevin McCullar Jr. waiting in the wings in case of injuries. But which of the two makes more sense for the Knicks? Could they both play a role?
A rotation doesn’t need to be concrete. From game to game, things can change. The strengths of the two are different, but both are common in the sense of being full of potential with considerable downside. It’s easy to scheme both out of a game, which makes identifying specific matchups necessary.
Sochan’s biggest weakness is shooting; he’s always been a basket case on offense. He brings rebounding and a smidge of secondary playmaking, but he’ll make the people guarding Josh Hart look like Patrick Beverley if he gets the ball on the perimeter.
Diawara’s simply being a limited rookie. If you remember, he started the game against the Spurs on New Year’s Eve, which started the slump, and Mitch Johnson expertly schemed him out of the game. He sagged off Diawara, daring him to either shoot or put the ball on the floor. He’s not an advanced enough jumpshooter (especially in non-C&S situations) to shoot out of it, and his ballhandling needs improvement. It’s not a terrible thing for a rookie, but it must be considered.
So what are their strengths? Diawara is a switchable defender who can hold his own against most players due to his size and length, as is Sochan. Sochan is a great rebounder, while Diawara has sneakily been extremely effective on catch-and-shoot (41.5 3pt%) and corner threes (12-for-14).
Diawara is an asset in non-OG Anunoby minutes for a team that has a lot of guards and small wings in the rotation, but the team has specifically dominated minutes where Karl-Anthony Towns is playing and Jalen Brunson is sitting:
The best role for Diawara is to play the non-Brunson minutes, where KAT is the lead option on offense. Alvarado comes off the bench as the ballhandler, and his two-man game with him and Towns can collapse the defense enough to get it to an open shooter, such as Shamet or Diawara. It’s not a big role, but it’s a useful one for a rookie.
Figuring out a role for Sochan is more difficult, as he’s struggled mightily in his first few games as a Knick. It wasn’t going to be pretty every time, and it hasn’t yielded much in a small sample. Still, there might be one option that has the best chance of working out.
The Knicks are struggling badly when one of Towns or Robinson isn’t available. As much as we’ve wished Hukporti could emerge as a viable third center, it’s rough at times out there. When Towns had to sit for a bit in the fourth quarter against the Bulls, the offense ground to a halt.
That’s where Sochan comes in. Against teams without much size (like the Bulls, who deployed Jalen Smith and OAKAAK Guerschon Yabusele at the 5 that night), Sochan is a viable small-ball five who’s more versatile than Hukporti. Mike Brown hasn’t totally leaned into untraditional fives, but I think it’s worth considering deploying Sochan in that role over Hukporti when the team can’t throw one of Robinson or Towns out there.
There is a spacing component, as Sochan’s lack of perimeter shooting makes it so that it’s hard to see him on the floor with one of the Knicks’ worst/unwilling shooters (Robinson, Hart), but he can viably be used in spurts as a small-ball five in a lineup full of floor spacers.