Brandon Knight has signed with the Perth Wildcats for NBL27, ending their search for a point guard, and filling the last spot on John Rillie’s roster. Perth open the season against South East Melbourne Phoenix at RAC Arena on Saturday night, though Knight isn’t expected to be in a position to play in that game.
Wildcats fans have been quite vocal about their need for a strong point guard as the piece that’s been missing since Bryce Cotton left for Adelaide.
Mason Jones, signed as Cotton’s replacement, lasted five games last season before the club released him, and the position was the obvious weak point in a campaign that ended in a semi-finals exit to the eventual Champions, the Sydney Kings. General manager Danny Mills said earlier this month that Perth would be strategic about the replacement rather than sign someone to fill a hole. Knight’s name had already come up once, in January, when the club looked at him as an injury replacement for David Duke Jr.
Knight’s NBA career
Knight went eighth overall to the Detroit Pistons in the 2011 draft, out of a single season at Kentucky, in a draft class that also produced Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, and Kawhi Leonard. He made the All-Rookie First Team the following year and played 451 NBA games across Detroit, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Houston, Cleveland, and Dallas, averaging 14 points, 3.9 assists, and 3.1 rebounds.
Things to do in Perth
The best of it came at Phoenix. In 2015-16, he averaged a career-high 19.6 points a game. In November of that season, he dropped a career-high 38 points and 11 rebounds on Denver, scoring 17 in the fourth quarter to drag the Suns back from a 17-point deficit, on an ankle he’d sprained before halftime. Two weeks earlier, he’d posted his first triple-double against the Lakers: 30 points, 15 assists, ten rebounds, and four steals.
His last NBA game was with Dallas in 2022, and he’s played in Puerto Rico and Greece since. He won the BSN MVP award and the Puerto Rican league scoring title in 2023 at 23.3 points per game, and most recently averaged 18 points, 6.3 assists, and 3.7 rebounds across 20 appearances at 47% from the field.
