After plenty of signature draft night tricks, including foregoing a selection on night one entirely, the New York Knicks made their first addition of the summer by adding Jack Kayil at #39 overall last Wednesday.
The German guard averaged over 12 points per game for Alba Berlin last season, bringing an interesting blend of on-ball confidence and shot-making to the table that the Knicks currently only have in some of their more accomplished veteran players.
He’s also quickly learning how demanding it can be to be drafted by a championship contender. Kayil shared, after being drafted, that he planned to join the Knicks this season. But they have other plans, intending to keep him overseas, according to SNY’s Ian Begley.
Knicks planning to stash German draft pick before he comes to USA
Late-night searches of Reddit threads with clips of Kayil's play abroad are worth the time of any Knick fan, but not just yet. Begley reported less than a week after New York selected Kayil that the plan, organizationally, was to keep him overseas next season.
These kinds of things tend to happen when prospects speak shortly in the wake of being drafted by an organization that hasn't yet told them how they'll be spending the next year of their lives. New York has an NBA Championship to defend.
They could certainly benefit from Kayil's wily shot creation, but the likelihood that he's a capable enough defender come playoff time to legitimately stick in the rotation is small. Even Mohamed Diawara got shelved once all of the Knicks' chips were on the table.
Knicks may have shown us what kind of player they want Kayil to become
The Knicks may have revealed some of what they're looking for in Kayil with their utilization of Landry Shamet in the Atlanta Hawks series as a ball handling guard.
New York has Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns to focus on offensively, and need the supporting talent around the two budding superstars to excel in catch-and-shoot scenarios.
Guerschon Yabusele is an example of an offensively-talented NBA player that just didn't have the right skillset to fit around both Brunson and Towns. It doesn't have to be an indictment on his career to notice as much.
The Knicks' pivot to Towns as a playmaker against the Hawks allowed everyone else to thrive off of the ball, because of the extent to which it opened up Brunson's game as a scorer. But the short period of time in which Mike Brown enabled Shamet to make plays for his teammates may have shown the exact kind of role they're looking to rein someone like Kayil into.
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