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Imagine being 25 years old and having to prove that you are not washed up. I have thought a lot about James Wiseman over the last few weeks. He’s heading (he hopes) into his sixth NBA season, playing for (he hopes) his fourth team. Along the way, he’s suffered at least two major injuries, missed an entire season due to one, and has gone from second pick in the draft to fighting for scraps on the Knicks. The trajectory is sorta Dickensian, lacking only a redemptive third act to complete the tale satisfactorily.
At 25, I was two years into marriage and parenthood and fumbling my way around a professional ladder. The résumé was starting to look okay, though, and the New York Post had not published articles about my failed attempts to fully realize my potential. I had not been accepted and rejected by three NBA fanbases. That would have been quite a heavy yoke for my young shoulders.
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Today’s anniversary neatly aligns a similar player with Wiseman on my mental screen: Trey Burke.
Burke was a collegiate star at Michigan, the ninth pick in the NBA Draft, and a member of the league’s All-Rookie First Team, with votes for Rookie of the Year. He was picked ahead of Giannis, CJ, Steven Adams, Timmy, and a few other guys who will still wear NBA jerseys in the 2026-27 season.
Burke had squared off against Chris Paul and Stephen Curry and shown real potential. But after averaging 12.8 PPG in his first year, things changed. Midway through his sophomore season, coach Quin Snyder moved him to the bench in favor of rookie Dante Exum to give the second unit scoring punch and develop Exum. Burke handled the change professionally and exhibited defensive improvement, but his shooting percentages declined. The Jazz missed the playoffs.
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Burke’s role shrank further. In year three, he appeared in 64 games with zero starts, averaging 10.6 points, 2.3 assists, and 1.8 rebounds in 21.3 minutes. He thrived, briefly, as a bench scorer while Exum was out, but the mid-season acquisition of Shelvin Mack and Raul Neto’s emergence squeezed him out of Snyder’s rotation. Burke sat for long stretches late in the season…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/date-knicks-history-ny-signs-134632127.html
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Publish date : 2026-10-11 13:46:00
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