One roster spot, five candidates, and a Robinson-shaped hole to fill

Training camp opens with the Knicks' frontcourt depth chart looking more like an open audition than a settled rotation. Andre Drummond holds the clearest claim to minutes behind Karl-Anthony Towns, but James Wiseman and Bruce Brown are both in on training camp contracts, and Konchar and the Exhibit 10 additions push the competition for that final roster spot into genuine uncertainty. The front office tried to solve this more cleanly — the two-year offer sheet to Moussa Cisse in July was a real swing — and Dallas matching it left the Knicks exactly here: sorting through camp bodies rather than slotting in a known quantity.

The void they're filling is real. Robinson averaged 8.3 rebounds and shot nearly 70 percent from the field last season, and he did it in under 19 minutes a night. That kind of efficiency off the bench doesn't grow on trees, and the three-year, $47.4 million deal he got from Boston reflects what the market thought of him. Drummond is the incumbent answer, but he's on a one-year minimum-range deal for a reason — he's a gamble on upside, not a guarantee of production.

What makes this competition worth watching isn't just the roster spot. It's what the winner reveals about how the Knicks plan to manage their frontcourt when Towns needs rest or picks up foul trouble — which, on a road trip, in a tough Cup group, with Brunson's wrist still a question mark, matters more than it would on a deeper team. I wrote two weeks ago that Drummond and Konchar represented the math of defending on a budget. This camp battle is where that math gets tested against actual basketball.