NBA Summer League’s Las Vegas games wrapped up over the weekend, giving the New York Knicks and every other participating team a clean look at how their young prospects look in a competitive atmosphere against inferior competition. Only one major question remains for this summer: who does the team plan on bringing in with their final available contract?
They don’t have an absurd amount of financial freedom to play with, but they’re still left with one veteran’s minimum deal to throw at an available free agent.
A few names have been tossed around as names for the Knicks to potentially court, including a few familiar former Knicks guards in Landry Shamet and Alec Burks, but one particular former star-turned-role player has gained some interest as an intriguing bench piece.
The Knicks have reportedly been interested in Ben Simmons since all of the major free agents went off the board, with New York still walking away with a few helpful scoring reserves in Guerschon Yabusele and Jordan Clarkson. He’s not the same point-forward phenom he was in the early 2020s, with his career having been thrown completely off its axis by back injuries and his approach to the game, but he’s now one of the best available free agents left between the versatile defense he offers and the playmaking he brings to any front court.
According to NBA insider Marc Stein, the Knicks are one of the teams most interested in adding Simmons to their rosters alongside the Phoenix Suns, Boston Celtics and Sacramento Kings. New York, unlike the rest of their listed competitors, have a real chance to win a lot of games in 2025-26, making their pitch to Simmons much more attractive for the short-term deal he’d be offered.
Simmons made the case for what he offers to a winning environment in the second half of the 2024-25 season, where he signed to the Los Angeles Clippers following his buyout with the Brooklyn Nets. He didn’t get a ton of burn in the team’s first-round, seven-game loss to the Denver Nuggets, but he contributed notably strong defense against Nikola Jokic to continue hounding the 3x MVP into some of the toughest covers he’s ever had to face in a playoff setting.
That’s the sort of rotational defense the Knicks are hoping to implement, with the oft-injured Mitchell Robinson being the only other stopper in New York’s center rotation. Karl-Anthony Towns has never been great on that end, and the smaller Yabusele is more of a perimeter-dwelling power forward than a big rim-protecter.
The Knicks will have to work to add Simmons as the team’s final free agent, even if it’s been several years since he was considered an All-Star, let alone a dependable player, but he continues to tempt teams with his intrigue.
