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Can You Name 10 Non-Random Knicks Players? You Cannot

4:17 PM EDT on October 8, 2020

Two random Knicks players, doing random basketball stuff, forgettably.
Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty

It is apparently Guy Remembering season. Team Twitter accounts have recently been inviting followers to simply name some players from their history, for no reason other than the remembering. God knows we at Defector are acquainted with the simple pleasure of allowing your consciousness to float aimlessly through the misspent square footage of the mind palace given over to biographical details of wholly unspecial, unremarkable former professional athletes. It's therapeutic, is what it is, to say nothing of a rare opportunity to extract what very little social value there is in having the name "Ledell Eackles" embedded in your brain for all time. If teams and leagues want to get in on this act, hey, the more the merrier.

But certain teams should be careful how they enter this realm. It's one thing to say, "Hey, let's remember some former Knicks!" Certainly there are many former Knicks, and engaging fans in a recollection of them without qualification is perfectly harmless. But there's a way to phrase this that forces the mind into an unpleasant reconciliation with a sickening truth:

What's far, far more challenging than naming a random Knicks player is naming a non-random Knicks player. Knicks players are almost by definition random. I defy you to name 10 non-random Knicks players in the next 10 minutes. You simply cannot do it. Studs become Guys the moment they first don a Knicks jersey. R.J. Barrett became a random Knicks player so fast he might as well have entered Madison Square Garden via a Brundle teleporter ride he shared with Jared Jeffries. Kevin Knox came straight out of a Guy generator.

We brainstormed this problem in Slack this morning and decided that the last truly non-random Knicks player, before Carmelo Anthony, started for the team in 1994. Please use the comments below to name any Knicks players. Any at all.

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