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Kyshawn George Can Add Pop to Knicks’ Guard Room

Posted on by angelo
Kyshawn George Can Add Pop to Knicks’ Guard Room

Kyshawn George is a jumbo-sized guard who would make the Knicks’ bench even more dynamic and talented.

Shooting guard in the 2024 NBA Draft class may be the position that teams don’t find an immediate, franchise-altering player for but there are still several options worth exploring for any team willing to focus on development at SG. Kyshawn George from the University of Miami fits the mold that teams are looking for in a more modern NBA offense: taller, pass-first wings with the ability to shoot from deep and work well in a team’s defense. The New York Knicks are absolutely no exception and if they’re trying to upgrade at this position with both size and shooting to take a load off of someone like Josh Hart or even Julius Randle, George is a great person to look at in this draft .

George, a 6-foot-8 prospect currently mocked to go somewhere in the middle of the first round this year, is a Swiss product who showed some flashes of sharp shooting and passing in limited time as a freshman with the Hurricanes. He averaged 7.6 points per game along with 3.0 boards and 2.2 assists in 23 minutes. His three-point ball is what pops out of his stat line. George shot 40.8 percent from deep, averaging 4.2 attempts per game.

When you look at any tape from him in this past season to help do an eye test on George, you might genuinely be taken aback by his size — I was! I thought I was looking at a forward on the floor, but no. George works best rolling with the ball in his hands and getting off some sick passes in the post after attracting several defenders who collapsed on the big guard. Not only does his pass look smooth, but his shot is butter, too. From three, you’re immediately interested in just how easily it seems he’s able to set his feet. This is super impressive for a freshman, even more impressive for a guard of his size. At the rim, he also has soft touch, which is where you can really see his guard skills shine through. His ball control makes these scoring opportunities easy and abundant, although he didn’t often get the ball in his hands as he was an underclassman on the squad last season.

Defensively, he plays very well alongside other bigs on the floor. This can potentially bode well for a team like the Knicks looking to stagger another larger body alongside Julius Randle, for example. He has some ceiling-scraping blocks at the rim, as well. I highly recommend looking some up if you want to feel like you’re watching some like a Jericho Sims-type athleticism within a player, but within someone with some actual timing defensively.

Let’s talk fit. We know that any rookie coming onto this team, barring a Victor Wembanyama-type prospect, is not starting this team. There’s also a decent chance they wouldn’t get minutes off the bench. And that’s fine! New York did not immediately hand the keys to players like Deuce McBride or Sims, two prospects they drafted when the going was good and there was no true need for a big pick to hit right away.

For Kyshawn George, the potential is obviously there. He commits defensively, he can shoot the three ball and it doesn’t feel like a fluke, and he’s unselfish with the ball in his hands. The intelligence, strength and team-oriented playstyle are all going to be immediate pluses to any system. For New York, as they are rumored to potentially be in on the Paul George “sweepstakes,” and as they work to lock in OG Anunoby, they could simply draft George and work from there in terms of their wing depth.

That all being said, it’s hard to look at clips of George and not see the havoc he could wreak with Hart, Donte DiVincenzo, and Isaiah Hartenstein on the floor. He’s a floater defensively, much like DiVincenzo, and with two guards mucking up passing lanes and one guard in George with size to make up for DiVo’s lack of that, the Knicks’ bench could earnestly be formidable, defensively. Couple those players with McBride running point and providing pop defensively, New York could form a pretty young and athletic second unit. And George staggered with Mitchell Robinson could take the load off of him at the rim, surely a much-needed remedy to an injury-prone big like Robinson.

I feel like every prospect I’ve written about this cycle is one I’m pretty confident about being a good role player for this Knicks team. And they all, for the most part, are. It’s no different with George. But the Miami jumbo guard could genuinely be someone New York utilizes out of Westchester and is eventually called upon not just for injury reasons.

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