The Knicks enter late July with 13 players signed and one open chair — not because they can't find a 14th man, but because they can't decide what he should be. Tyler Nickel made the argument for a shooter at summer league. The roster still needs a third center.

It is late July. The New York Knicks are the defending champions. They have 13 men under contract and no particular urgency to sign the 14th — and that is exactly the point.

When Las Vegas Summer League wrapped two weeks ago, the loudest case from the Knicks' camp came from someone nobody expected: Tyler Nickel, 22, a shooter out of Vanderbilt, averaging 17 points on 47.6 percent from three-point range. The Athletic's James L. Edwards III asked plainly whether Nickel had earned the 14th roster spot. The answer isn't obvious, which is part of why the seat is still empty.

The complication: the Knicks also need a third center.

Andre Drummond was signed this month to replace Mitchell Robinson, who carried New York's championship ring back to Boston. Drummond, 33, gives head coach Mike Brown a credible second big — rebounding, rim presence, and a sense of humor about being passed over for the NBA 2K cover. What Drummond doesn't provide is a third option. Karl-Anthony Towns anchors the frontcourt; Drummond backs him up; below that, the depth chart runs thin and the injury math gets uncomfortable fast.

Nick Richards is the most plausible center solution still on the market. The 28-year-old Jamaican-born big man — raised at St. Mary's in Manhasset, Long Island before his Kentucky career — split 2025-26 between Phoenix (3.2 points in nine minutes a night) and Chicago (9.4 points in 22 minutes). He is a career 62 percent shooter in the paint. He is also drawing interest elsewhere: Sports Illustrated reported this month that the Knicks face competition from at least two other teams in any Richards pursuit, which is why waiting for the market to clear has a cost.

Duop Reath, a 29-year-old stretch-five who spent three seasons with Portland, offers a different wrinkle. Reath shot 41.8 percent from three in 2025-26, a floor-spacing skill neither Richards nor Drummond brings reliably. He played only 32 games and averaged 2.9 points in eight minutes — limited usage on a rebuilding team — but his per-36 numbers (13.1 points, 5.3 rebounds) suggest a player whose résumé undersells what he can do on a contender.

The delay, by most accounts, is not indecision. It is optionality. The Knicks have used this posture before: last summer they added pieces in September, after training camp opened and competition sorted the roster. A team source told ESPN that nine of the ten key rotation players from the title run are back. With that core intact, there is no urgent need to lock in a $2.2 million minimum deal for a center who does not quite fit when a better option might emerge — or when a 22-year-old who shot 47.6 from three at summer league might be more valuable than any available big.

That is the actual decision sitting on Leon Rose's desk. Nickel gives the Knicks a floor-spacer who can stretch defenses in low-leverage spots and maybe grow into something more. A center gives them depth insurance behind Towns and Drummond on a team that now operates in a tougher East — LeBron James signed with the 76ers last Friday, which recalibrates everything about the repeat odds. An ankle, a foul-trouble night, a bruised elbow: those things happen in April and May and the Knicks, two centers deep, would feel them.

Both answers are real. Neither is obvious. That is why it is taking this long.