The frontcourt audition is running, and nobody's pulling away

Karl-Anthony Towns remains the load-bearing wall of this frontcourt, same as he's been all summer. Behind him, Andre Drummond and James Wiseman are working through training camp on very different résumés and very similar uncertainty. Drummond is a known quantity in the sense that you know exactly what he gives you — physicality, rebounding bursts, foul trouble — and the Knicks signed him for $3.9 million knowing all of that. Wiseman is a different kind of bet: still young enough that the promise hasn't fully expired, still unproven enough that it might.

The Moussa Cisse door closed when Dallas matched the offer sheet, and that stings a little in retrospect. The Knicks moved fast on him, which tells you they understood the problem. What they got instead is a depth chart built on training camp contracts and optimism, with Bruce Brown also in the mix. None of these are Mitchell Robinson — Robinson pulled down 8.3 rebounds a game last season and finished at nearly 70 percent from the field, and Boston paid accordingly. The Knicks couldn't match it and didn't try to.

The honest version of this story is that no single move was going to fill that void, and the front office probably knew it. The question now is whether Drummond and Wiseman can split the minutes in a way that doesn't leave Towns exposed on nights when one of them is in foul trouble or simply not right. That's a real operational question, and training camp is the only place to start answering it.