Jeremy Sochan's Shooting Issues Limiting Opportunities With Knicks

That inability to hit from outside directly cost him his spot.

Brown had pulled Mohamed Diawara out of the rotation to give Sochan a fair look, but when the production never came, the rookie walked right back in.

Diawara has been one of the better stories of the Knicks' season, shooting well from three and guarding multiple positions on a 6-foot-9 frame with a 7-foot-4 wingspan. Brown did not need long to make up his mind.

Sochan has been largely limited to garbage time in recent games. Diawara, meanwhile, posted 10 points and a team-best plus-25 against the Milwaukee Bucks on Feb. 27, followed it up with 14 points in a blowout win over the Spurs on March 1, and then chipped in nine points on 3-of-4 shooting against the Oklahoma City Thunder on March 4. The message from the coaching staff was pretty clear.

Jeremy Sochan's Shooting Form Is Getting Worse

A practice session ahead of the Thunder game made the issue even harder to ignore. Sochan put up shot after shot from three, and barely any of them dropped. The hitch in his release that has always been part of his game looked noticeably worse, and there are no signs of it getting better.

That is the core problem. Brown runs an offense built on spacing, and if defenses can ignore Sochan beyond the arc, it clogs up the floor for Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.

Sochan's defensive versatility is real and valuable, but it only gets him on the floor if he stops being a liability on the other end. Even an incremental improvement in shooting would change how defenses guard him, and that changes everything about how useful he can actually be for this team.

The Knicks wanted him for a reason. That reason can still show up, but the shooting has to come first.