Knicks Sign Brown, Agbaji, Wiseman To Non-Guaranteed Deals

A versatile 6’4″ guard who can defend multiple positions, Brown appeared in all 82 regular season games for the Nuggets last season. The 30-year-old averaged 7.9 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.1 assists, and 1.0 steal in 24.4 minutes per game, with a solid shooting line of .475/.385/.762.

According to Steve Popper of Newsday (Twitter link), there are executives in New York’s front office who have been fans of Brown for “a long time.”

Agbaji was the 14th overall pick in the 2022 draft but bounced around the league in his first four NBA seasons, spending time in Utah, Toronto, and Brooklyn. The 6’5″ shooting guard showed promise as a third-year player with the Raptors in 2024/25, averaging 10.4 PPG and 3.8 RPG with a .399 3PT% in 64 games (45 starts), but saw his playing time and his production drop off significantly last season.

After averaging 5.1 PPG and 2.3 RPG in 15.7 MPG across 62 appearances for the Raptors and Nets in ’25/26, Agbaji didn’t receive a qualifying offer from Brooklyn and became an unrestricted free agent in July.

As for Wiseman, the No. 2 overall pick has battled health issues since entering the league with the Warriors in 2020, missing the entire 2021/22 season due to a knee injury and then tearing his Achilles at the start of the ’24/25 campaign.

In 152 total regular season outings for Golden State, Detroit, and Indiana, the big man has averaged 9.0 PPG and 5.5 RPG in 18.8 MPG while shooting 56.0% from the floor. He made just four appearances for the Pacers last season, with brief stints on the roster to open the season and again in December.

It appears that Brown, Agbaji, Wiseman will be among the players competing for a back-end spot on the Knicks’ regular season roster during the training camp and preseason. Center Drew Eubanks and wing John Konchar, whose non-guaranteed Exhibit 9 contracts were also officially announced by the team today (via Twitter), will be in that mix as well.

The Knicks took a similar approach to their final roster spot a year ago, when Landry Shamet beat out Malcolm Brogdon, Garrison Mathews, and Matt Ryan to make the team. Shamet ultimately emerged as a trusted part of head coach Mike Brown’s rotation and signed a new four-year contract with New York earlier this offseason.

The Knicks currently have 13 players on guaranteed contracts, so barring a trade, there are two open spots on the 15-man regular season roster. However, filling both of those openings would push the team’s salary into second-apron territory.

There would be nothing stopping New York from carrying a full 15-man roster into the season and operating above the second apron for the time being, but the front office has treated that threshold as a de facto hard cap in recent years, with team owner James Dolan confirming in June that he’s adamant about not surpassing the second-apron line.

Assuming Dolan sticks to that stance and the Knicks don’t make a preseason trade, Brown, Agbaji, Wiseman, Eubanks, and Konchar will be battling for a single roster spot. If the club were to shed some salary on the trade market or is willing to move above the second apron at least temporarily, it could open the door for more than one of them to make the cut.

New York now has 19 players under contract, with the five newcomers joining the 13 players on guaranteed salaries and big man Liam Robbins, who signed an Exhibit 10 contract on Tuesday. The club also signed six players to Exhibit 10 contracts on Tuesday and then waived them immediately, lining them up to join the Westchester Knicks in the G League.

Contracts that include Exhibit 9 language but not an Exhibit 10 clause protect a team in the event that a player suffers a preseason injury but can’t be converted into two-way deals and don’t put a player in position to receive a bonus if he’s waived and then joins his team’s G League affiliate.