Knicks Now Have a Win-Win Center Trade With Clippers to Pursue

As the Knicks stay the course and remain patient at center, they're seeing new options pop up every day in the lead up to camp. First it was Hunter Dickinson becoming available as a free agent, then Julian Reese doing the same.

Now, a trade opportunity with the Clippers might be there for the taking. On Wednesday, the NBA severe punishments for Los Angeles circumventing the cap with Kawhi Leonard. The penalties included the team losing five future first-round draft picks, spanning from 2029 through 2033.

With the Clippers now being down several incredibly valuable tools as they start a new rebuild post-Leonard, they could set their sights on shedding young players with potential value to restock their draft capital. That’s where New York could strike a deal.

Knicks should see if Clippers are open to Yanic Konan Niederhäuser trade

Second-year Clippers big man Yanic Konan Niederhäuser is someone LA could, theoretically, sell off, and the Knicks are set up well to tempt them into just that, as they have first-round picks in 2030, 2032 and 2033 to put on the table.

The former Penn State center and Swiss import played in 41 games in his rookie season in 2025-26, registering 4.3 ppg on 64% shooting, along with 2.9 rpg. Before going down with a season-ending foot injury, Niederhäuser saw himself carve out a rotation role with Ivica Zubac hurt and eventually traded.

The Clippers went 19-10 in Niederhäuser's final 29 games of the season. He would up playing double-digit minutes in 18 of those 29 games, averaging around 7 ppg and 5 rpg in those contests he got more run in—LA also won his minutes in those games by 39 points.

Looking more into how the Clippers fared with Niederhäuser, Los Angeles had a 120 offensive rating, 113 defensive rating, and +7.0 net rating in 721 possessions with him on the floor from Dec. 23 through March 4 (when he got injured). The Clippers’ NETRTG dropped to +4.9 in that span (2,428 possessions) with him off the floor, per CourtSketch.

Yanic Konan-Niederhauser rookie stats
when playing 17+ minutes:
(8 games)

11.0 PTS (70/33/81)
7.3 REB
0.9 AST
0.3 STL
2.1 BLK

+9.0 per game🔥 pic.twitter.com/jTrtoqaQPd
— clippa twitta (@clipfullyloaded) May 27, 2026

Admittedly, he is a bit of the opposite in terms of what the Knicks usually look for in a center. In 424 minutes for LA in 2025-26, Niederhäuser had a 10.4% offensive rebounding rate and 21.4% defensive rebounding rate, according to Basketball-Reference.

Since the start of the 2022-23 season, the Knicks have only had three centers play at least 400 minutes for them in a season and not have an offensive rebounding rate over 11 percent: Jericho Sims in 2023-24 (10.7%), Karl-Anthony Towns (9.8%) in 2024-25, and Precious Achiuwa (10%) in 2024-25 when he was also playing power forward.

KAT is a defensive rebounding machine (31.8% in two years with Knicks) and boosted his OREB% to 11.2% during the Knicks championship campaign in 2025-26. In terms of rebounding, Niederhäuser probably slides more into the Achiuwa/Sims arena. Achiuwa had a 21% DREB% in 2024-25 and Sims had a 17.5% DREB% in 2023-24.

Still, Niederhäuser is only entering the second year of a standard first-round rookie deal, so he has major room for development. He's low-cost as a late first-rounder, too, making $2.88M this year, while having team options for both his third ($3.02M) and fourth years ($5.45M).

The issue with trying to trade for a guy like Niederhäuser, who is both cheap AND good, is the fact he could be the future starting center for the Clippers. Though his quieter rookie year doesn't quite place him in franchise cornerstone territory yet, it'd be no surprise if Los Angeles has a stiff asking price to take him off its hands.

It probably wouldn’t be the cheapest of swings for the Knicks to take for a third center, especially since the Clippers need options to replace current 38-year-old starter Brook Lopez. However, he’s someone who has contributed to a team that was winning, and he hasn't done enough yet in his career to be off-limits.

That opens the door for New York to potentially explore this with Los Angeles hurting for future draft picks.

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