{"id":128708,"date":"2025-08-08T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T09:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128708\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T09:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T09:35:09","slug":"knicks-former-7-foot-1-center-leaves-nba-to-sign-contract-in-israel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/128708\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks’ former 7-foot-1 center leaves NBA to sign contract in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

His name might not ring a bell to many Knicks fans.<\/p>\n

But the diehard Knickerbocker supporters will remember Dmytro Skapintsev.<\/p>\n

The 7-foot-1 Ukrainian center played two games for the Knicks on a two-way contract during the 2023-24 season.<\/p>\n

He has spent most of his time in the G League.<\/p>\n

Skapintsev played two seasons with the Westchester Knicks before splitting 2024-25 between the Maine Celtics and the Rip City Remix.<\/p>\n

Now, he’s heading overseas.<\/p>\n

Skapintsev has signed a one-year contract with Hapoel Jerusalem, the Israeli team announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He put up solid numbers in the G League to earn the opportunity.<\/p>\n

In 2024-25, Skapintsev averaged 8.8 points, 7.8 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 blocks per game at the G League level.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0<\/strong>Warriors, Bulls can solve Kuminga, Giddey problems with one trade<\/a><\/p>\n

At 27 years old, this is probably a chance for Skapintsev to prove he can play at a high level in a strong league. It may get him one more NBA opportunity.<\/p>\n

His path to the NBA was quirky, because although Skapintsev is from Ukraine, he actually played his college basketball at Cal State-Northridge.<\/p>\n

The Knicks eventually gave him that two-way deal after Summer League in 2023. He didn’t prove he could stick around at the NBA level, despite immense size and intriguing skill.<\/p>\n

His basketball journey still likely has a lot of years in it, even if they aren’t in the NBA.<\/p>\n

Skapintsev may go down as that guy who made two brief Knicks appearances, or he may find a way to comeback to the league at some point down the road. For now, he heads to Israel.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0<\/strong>LeBron James could turn into NBA’s biggest competition with $200 million from Saudi Arabia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His name might not ring a bell to many Knicks fans. But the diehard Knickerbocker supporters will remember…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":128709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-128708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114992468776923047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}