For the past several weeks, rumors have been circulating about how the New York Knicks may be interested in moving on from their free agency experiment, Guerschon Yabusele, ahead of this year's trade deadline.
Since putting pen to paper on a two-year pact with the ball club last summer, the power forward has failed to replicate his career-best 2024-25 production and, recently, has found himself virtually falling out of coach Mike Brown's rotation entirely.
Now, for the most part, this trade chatter was merely viewed as hypothetical. That is, until Wednesday, when Stefan Bondy of The New York Post revealed that sources have officially confirmed the Knicks are actively talking to multiple teams about trading Yabusele.
As highlighted by NBA insider Ian Begley earlier this month, the idea of offloading the 30-year-old would likely be centered around New York "getting back what they can" to help bolster their talent pool for a long playoff run.
While this team clearly could use some help, especially considering they've gone 7-11 over their last 18 games, hoping that Yabusele will bring anything remotely close to what they need back in return is somewhat of a fool's errand.
Knicks won't net anything of value in exchange for just Yabusele
Through 36 games played with the Knicks, Yabusele finds himself posting incredibly underwhelming averages of 2.9 points and 2.2 rebounds while shooting 39.4 percent from the floor and 31.7 percent from distance.
Simply put, this level of play is not enough to net the Knicks any semblance of a valuable asset in an in-season deal.
Landing an impact player at a position of need would require a lot more to be offered in exchange, with some believing that it could cost as much as star center Karl-Anthony Towns to get done.
More realistic, however, is the idea Begley recently presented, floating Mitchell Robinson as someone who could be dealt to bolster the Knicks' rotation. To him, offloading Mitch "might be their best approach to landing a difference-maker on the trade market."
As things currently stand, New York resides in the third seed in the conference standings and is regularly regarded as the favorite to represent the East in the 2026 NBA Finals.
Considering their recent slump, clearly, this team should be viewed as one that could be in the market for adding a spark plug talent to their arsenal at the deadline as they look to get back on track.
Of course, in order to get something of value they'll need to give up something of value, and, by all accounts, Yabusele alone is not that.