Steve Popper: Newest Knick Jeremy Sochan can let bully Pistons know he means business
New Knick Jeremy Sochan, formerly of the Spurs warms up before a game on Jan. 22, 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Credit: Getty Images/Chris Gardner
GREENBURGH — Jeremy Sochan arrived in New York and joined the Knicks on the practice floor, already dying his hair blue and orange, doing his best to fit in. But that fit will rely on more than his willingness to accessorize and match the Knicks team colors.
With little time to acclimate himself to more than the colors he could get thrown into the mix quickly. Perhaps as soon as Thursday night when the Knicks resume the post-All-Star break schedule by hosting the Detroit Pistons at Madison Square Garden.
It’s a fitting place for him to start since what the Knicks hope to get from Sochan, like they got from the other recent in-season addition, Jose Alvarado, is a touch of toughness. No better place to test that than against the Pistons, who the Knicks admittedly were bullied and beaten up by in their first two meetings this season.
It took Alvarado three games into his Knicks tenure to get a technical foul for shoving and getting in the face of Philadelphia’s Trendon Watford after a hard foul sent Mitchell Robinson to the floor. Sochan, who was waived last week by the Spurs in his fourth season after being a 2022 lottery pick, hopes to bring a similar attitude to the Knicks as they begin a push toward the postseason.
Asked what he brings to the team, Sochan said, “Energy. The kind of mold the coach has been doing and the Knicks have been doing and what he wants for me I think I can really excel in. I bring versatility, defense, energy, a little bit of that nasty. I can’t wait.”
He might not have to wait as Knicks coach Mike Brown indicated that even on a team with solid depth, Sochan will get a chance to take the minutes that have been allotted to rookie Mo Diawara. While the Knicks defense improved drastically in the final 12 games ahead of the All-Star break, there is little doubt that come playoff time experience and toughness counts.
“Mo’s had a good season so far,” Brown said. “As a young guy — as you guys know, I’ll play young guys and I have played young guys in front of vets before — but I’m going to give Jeremy an opportunity. Similar to Tyler [Kolek’s situation], Jose’s a vet. He knows the league. The league knows him. He knows the officials and visa versa. So they’re going to get an opportunity. But at the end of the day I’m going to play who I think is best for us. Right now Jeremy is new. He hasn’t played for us. So I have to see rather quickly what we have in him before going to the playoffs.”
The Knicks faced this situation in the postseason last year when Tom Thibodeau was searching for combinations that had rarely seen the court together. Delon Wright was dusted off and thrown into the fray. Brown has, as he said, been willing to play the young players, inserting the 20-year-old Diawara as a starter at times and putting him into the action in huge spots. But he also wants to see what he has in Sochan and Alvarado, how they fit among the key rotation pieces.
“Anytime you can add that to your team, you add it to your team” Brown said. “Especially if they bring other things to the table. Jose brings a level of quickness with the basketball especially, that we haven’t had.
"He can handle the ball. Even in San Antonio they tried to put him at the point guard position a little bit. Those types of things at that size, you start saying that type of player has some physicality, has some nastiness to him. That’s a pretty good thing to have.”
This might not be the true test of how the Knicks measure up to the Eastern Conference-leading Pistons with Jalen Duran and Isaiah Stewart both serving suspensions for their parts in the fight with the Charlotte Hornets. But the Knicks can claim they weren’t at full strength in the earlier two meetings. They were missing Josh Hart in the first game and then Karl-Anthony Towns and OG Anunoby in the next one. Anunoby is listed as questionable for this game, but did practice after missing the last four games with a toenail avulsion (having his toenail removed) and said he feels much better.
Still, when you lose by 31 and 38, seeing the Pistons across the way is a test and the Knicks want to prove they can answer.
“They didn’t just win the game, they beat us pretty bad,” Brown said. “So for us, and I don’t like to say that this game is more important than the next game. Every game is extremely important. But there comes a certain point when you’re in competition. If the wins and losses are as lopsided as those two losses that should shake you up a little bit.
“At the end of the day, if we win [Thursday] or win the next two games, or how many games we play them, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that we’re going to beat them come playoff time or vice versa. I’m a firm believer in that. I’ve been around this thing too long to see, some teams go 0-4 and still win the series. Some teams go 3-4 and still win the series. That part doesn’t matter. It’s just about how the first two games turned out for us.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
