James Wiseman Just Made the Hardest Cut Easy

Nobody is going to remember the score Tuesday night in Toronto. The Knicks lost 148-98 with every starter in street clothes, and the game was a tryout from the opening tip. But one decision got a lot easier while it was happening.

James Wiseman started at center. Not Drew Eubanks. Not Tony Bradley. Wiseman. Against Toronto's real starting five, with no Drummond behind him, he went 18 points and 10 rebounds on 7-for-8 shooting in 24 minutes, made all four of his free throws, and grabbed 4 offensive rebounds, 40 percent of the team's total, per Empire Sports Media. On a night the Knicks got run off the floor, he was the one guy playing for a job who looked like he already had it.

I have been saying he is a lock since the preseason opener in Philly, and Tuesday was why. Mike Brown coached him in Golden State and has vouched for Wiseman with firsthand knowledge nobody else in that front office has. Before the Toronto game, Stefan Bondy reported in the New York Post that Brown sees a player humbled by his career path who understands how fast these chances go away. Former No. 2 pick. Five games in two years. An Achilles tear on opening night in Indiana. That history is in every possession he plays right now.

The honest counter is defense. Sports Illustrated flagged it after the game: Wiseman's drop coverage sits too deep, and Toronto's guards walked into clean looks off his screens all night. The offense was never the question. The coverage is the only argument left against him, on a team that just lost Mitchell Robinson's rim protection for good.

The case for Eubanks was never going to show up in a box score. He had 8 points Tuesday, and that is not the point with him. Eubanks is the veteran who does the intangibles well. He sets real screens, he is where he is supposed to be on both ends, and he gives a coach the same reliable minutes every night with no surprises in either direction. Eubanks is the floor. You know exactly what you are getting. Wiseman is the ceiling, and ceilings are what get young players cut when a coach wants certainty in October.

James Edwards at The Athletic has the 14th spot down to Wiseman against Bruce Brown, because the second apron leaves one chair. On The Putback today, Edwards laid out the other path: keep Brown first, partly to keep him away from other teams, keep working on a Dadiet trade, and sign Wiseman once the second spot opens. The front office wants both. This is the first plan that tries to get there in stages.

The risk in it is obvious, and it all sits on Wiseman. Waive him and he is not yours anymore. He becomes a 25-year-old former No. 2 pick coming off an 18 and 10 start, available to 29 other teams, while the Knicks shop a Dadiet deal that has had no takers all month. And every night before that deal lands, this roster carries two true bigs. We watched all last season what KAT's foul trouble does to that math. Drummond is the only other big, and the lob threat Robinson took to Boston does not exist anywhere else on this team except in Wiseman's game. A third center here is not a victory cigar. He plays real minutes on real nights.

One audition is left. Thursday at the Garden, same opponent, starters back on the floor with him. Wiseman does not need another 18 and 10. He needs one game where Toronto's guards stop getting where they want off his coverage.

The decision itself is easy after Tuesday. Wiseman is the pick. It is the sequencing that can burn them, and everybody in that building knows it.