This move has as much to do with the Knicks salary cap situation as it does his play, but rookie center Ariel Hukporti will not care — he is getting a guaranteed NBA contract.
The Knicks are converting Hukporti — the No. 58 pick in the NBA draft last June — from a two-way to standard NBA rookie contract, a story broken by Shams Charania of The Athletic.
The 7-foot German center (who played for Melbourne United in NBL last season) has the physical build of an NBA center but a lot of work to do on his offensive touch and game — which is why a two-way contract made sense for him (and he likely will spend part of this year in the G-League anyway). This season he’s played 29 minutes across four games, all largely in garbage time, has yet to score a point but has grabbed seven rebounds.
Signing Hukporti to a standard contract is more about finances than anything else.
The day before the season, the Knicks waived the injured Landry Shamet, plus Chuma Okeke and T.J. Warren, bringing their roster down to 12 players to start the season. The team has a deadline of Nov. 5 to get up to 14 players, under the terms of the CBA.
However, that CBA also hard-caps the Knicks at the second tax apron and the team is just $3.58 million below that line — they didn’t have the money to go sign two veteran minimum players to fill those roster spots. The Knicks can sign one veteran (maybe Shamet if healthy, perhaps someone else) and promote one of their two-way players, which they did with Hukporti.
Whatever the circumstances it’s a real chance for the rookie, we’ll see what he does with it.
