Signing Guerschon Yabusele over the offseason is so far looking like a bad move by the New York Knicks. And giving him a player option for 2026-27 is making the decision even worse.
New York would, at this point, love to trade Yabusele. That’s a reasonable goal, even amid his struggles. He’s only making $5.5 million—small potatoes in today’s NBA.
Yet, multiple league executives recently told James L. Edwards III of The Athletic that the Knicks will need to attach assets to Yabusele’s contract if they want to get rid of it. This is a fairly large issue when factoring in the constraints within which New York must work.
Guerschon Yabusele is making it harder for the Knicks to acquire help
Moving Yabusele would have always required the Knicks to fork over assets. That is how roster upgrades work.
But Yanusele’s contract tilting toward the toxic end of the spectrum complicates matters. Sponging up his $5.7 million player option for next season—which he’s bound to pick up—will be part of the value any receiving team is giving to New York.
Say the Knicks put the Washington Wizards’ second-round picks in 2026 and 2027 on the table. Attaching them to Yabusele is hardly a surefire way of landing another, more useful player. Those picks could be the cost of convincing another team to take on Yabusele alone.
Sweetening packages beyond there gets difficult relative to New York’s available assets. It doesn’t have a single first-round pick to trade, and Pacome Dadiet has not shown nearly enough to be an appealing prospect.
Tyler Kolek has no doubt increased his value across the league. Between his impact on the court and uber-cheap contract, though, he’s verging on indispensable. Deuce McBride’s sub-$4 million salary for next season falls into the same boat.
The Knicks may be stuck at the trade deadline
Short of the Knicks dangling a core player like Mitchell Robinson or Josh Hart in trade talks, the Yabusele flop could force them into relative idleness. That isn’t the end of the world. It’s also not ideal.
For all New York has shown, the roster is far from perfect. Kolek has solved the backup-point-guard problem, but the Knicks, at minimum, could use another bigger wing, as well as some Mitchell Robinson insurance.
Yabusele was never going to net the team someone or something special on his own. But he wasn’t supposed to be a demonstrative negative, either. And while the on-court fit might be a lost cause, the decision to give him a player option is the bigger flub. The Knicks are now left in a potentially tough-to-win situation because of it.
They can take their medicine, and keep him on the books into the summer, when they’ll be staring directly into the second apron. They can figure out a way to move him without getting much help in return. Or they could pull off a helpful trade for a wing or another big that ends up costing more than it might have if they never gave Yabusele a player option.
Critiques are easier to dole out with the benefit of hindsight. New York’s Yabusele negotiations were largely applauded in real time. But proper context, while important, doesn’t change the end result: that Yabusele has become an obstacle the Knicks must navigate—both on and off the court.