NEW YORK — Some of the Big Apple’s biggest basketball heroes were second-round picks in the NBA draft.
Like point guard Jalen Brunson, the guy marching through Manhattan with the Larry O’Brien Trophy in his arms last week during a joyous parade celebrating the New York Knicks winning their third league championship but first since 1973. And late center Willis Reed, the guy who limped onto the court before and during the early minutes of Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals to lift the Knicks to their first title.
So when the 2026 NBA draft resumed Wednesday night at the Barclays Center — the home of New York’s other NBA team, the Brooklyn Nets — with the Knicks on the clock with the No. 31 overall pick, signaling the start of the second and final round, every team had hope of finding someone who can be a key piece of a title team.
New York drafted Ohio State guard Bruce Thornton, but the franchise had already agreed to trade the rights to the pick to the Houston Rockets by the time NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum announced the selection.
Thornton was given a Knicks hat when his name was announced. He was wearing Houston headgear by the time he arrived for his interviews with reporters and said he was just happy to get to the league, even if it was in Texas and not with the new champions.
“Somebody said I got the wrong hat. I’m like, ‘What do you mean?'” Thornton said. “Then I heard it’s the Houston Rockets. I’m like, ‘No state tax, so that’s even better.'”
The first round, which began with the Washington Wizards selecting BYU forward AJ Dybantsa, finished late Tuesday night.
The end of it and the second round has become a process of wheeling and dealing, with teams like the Knicks, who traded back from the No. 24 spot and eventually out of the first round entirely, sometimes moving multiple times. That was part of the reason teams wanted to stop doing the entire draft in one night and break it into two, given them more time for evaluation.
That makes things hard for players such as Duke’s Isaiah Evans, who was in the green room at Barclays Center on Tuesday but wasn’t selected. He didn’t return Wednesday to hear his name called with the No. 33 pick that is owned by the Minnesota Timberwolves after a trade with the Nets.
It’s not as bad for players who weren’t expecting to be selected on the first night or understood patience, something Meleek Thomas said he learned playing for John Calipari at Arkansas.
“The most important lesson I learned from Coach Cal this year was: ‘Your time is coming. Don’t worry about when. Don’t worry about how,'” said Thomas, who was selected by the Sacramento Kings with the No. 34 pick and dealt to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
In a much different NBA with a different draft format, Reed was the No. 8 pick in the 1964 draft, which made him the first pick of the second round. The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer went on to lead the Knicks to titles in 1970 and 1973 and was the NBA Finals MVP both times.
Brunson was the No. 33 pick in the 2018 draft, taken early in the second round by the Dallas Mavericks. The Knicks signed him as a free agent in 2022, and the franchise has been on the rise ever since, culminating with a five-game victory over the San Antonio Spurs earlier this month when Brunson was MVP of the NBA Finals.
Jack Kayil, a guard from Germany whose rights were acquired by the Knicks with the No. 39 pick, not surprisingly named Brunson as the player he was hoping to learn from.
“We play kind of in a similar position,” Kayil said. “We are also in kind of the same position of the draft. He was also second round. So I think I can learn a lot of stuff, how he started getting into the NBA, into the league, getting in touch with that.”
The Knicks also acquired the rights to Tyler Nickel, the No. 47 pick from Vanderbilt, with their moves.
Among the other well-known names taken in the second round Wednesday were Richie Saunders, Dybantsa’s BYU teammate who was selected at No. 32 by the Memphis Grizzlies; Purdue’s Braden Smith, the NCAA’s career assists leader who was taken at No. 38 with a pick belonging to the Indiana Pacers; Kentucky’s Otega Oweh, with the No. 41 pick acquired by the Oklahoma City Thunder; and Emanuel Sharp from Houston at No. 45 to Sacramento.
The Wizards also had the 60th and final selection of the draft but dealt it to the Milwaukee Bucks. They took Malique Lewis, a forward from Trinidad and Tobago who most recently played in Australia.