The New York Knicks quietly made a decision on Wednesday, fully guaranteeing the contract of Ariel Hukporti. The young center now has a chance to continue his breakout season as he becomes an invaluable player for the Knickerbockers.
The Knicks entered the season in a precarious financial situation. They had a number of open roster spots to fill but very limited space to use in filling them. It was an open competition during Training Camp as to who would seize the last spots, and whether the team would end up waiving one of their recent draft picks to do so.
Ariel Hukporti was one of those players on the chopping block. The seven-foot German center was chosen 58th in the 2024 NBA Draft, which that year was the final pick. He was a whisper from going undrafted. He began his career on a two-way deal with the Knicks, and then his deal was converted into a two-year, standard contract before the end of the 2024-25 season.
That deal was fully non-guaranteed for this season, so the Knicks could have cleared him out to sign another player. Perhaps the only reason that they did not in Training Camp was that he didn't make enough to balance out the larger minimum salary of a veteran such as Malcolm Brogdon. When Brogdon retired, it eased the pressure, and the raw Hukporti stuck on the roster.
Would the Knicks keep Hukporti around?
What seemed likely was that the question of whether Hukporti would be kept or waived would continue through the season. That question hung over the start of the year, even as the second-year big man muscled his way into the rotation. Hukporti began playing a few minutes behind Mitchell Robinson and Karl-Anthony Towns on regular nights, and then playing a larger role when one or the other sat out a game.
An offensive maestro he is not, but his size has made a strong impact on defense, where he is blocking shots left and right and controlling the defensive glass. He is also bringing value on offense by pulling down offensive rebounds; only Mitchell Robinson has a higher offensive rebounding percentage among rostered Knicks than Hukporti, who is grabbing 13.5 percent of opponent misses.
The 23-year-old remains raw in many areas, and his development into a full-time rotation player is still a work in progress. It would not have been unthinkable for the Knicks to decide to pivot in another direction if the right option came around. With Hukporti on a non-guaranteed contract, they could do that at any time and see his salary wiped clear off their books.
While doing that and signing a veteran player would have been too expensive, an option that was on the table was waiving Hukporti and bringing him back on a pair of 10-day contracts to cover most of the time between now and the Trade Deadline, giving them flexibility to replace him but also to sign him back to a rest-of-season deal.
That option has now been taken off the table. The NBA fully guarantees all contracts on January 10th, and a player must clear waivers by that date to not have their contract count in full. That meant the functional deadline was Wednesday, January 7th -- and that deadline passed without a single whisper of waiving Hukporti.
Hukporti is joined by Landry Shamet and Mohamed Diawara in getting their contracts fully guaranteed, and all have played important roles for the Knicks at different times this season. The Knicks are making it work around their stars, and Hukporti has been a part of that -- and now he appears to be sticking around for the time being.
It's not a shout from the rooftops, but it's a solid declaration of their belief in him.