There have been 75 first-round picks in the long, 80-year history of the New York Knicks.
Some of them have been iconic. Some of them made the Hall of Fame. Some of them went on to be known as something other than a Knick. And, as we all know, a lot of them were pretty forgettable.
There’s an exclusive list of those 75 within Knicks lore. In the first 79 years of the franchise, only eight of them had ever won a title with the franchise that drafted them, all between 1965-72:
Bill Bradley (2nd overall,
1965) Dave Stallworth (5th overall, 1965) Cazzie Russell (1st overall, 1966) Clyde Frazier (5th overall, 1967) Bill Hosket (10th overall, 1968) John Warren (11th overall, 1969) Dean Meminger (16th overall, 1971) Tom Riker (8th overall, 1972)
But now, as we bask in the glory of the end of a 53-year title drought, a ninth name has been added to the list.
Pacôme Dadiet was born on July 27, 2005, in Aubagne, France, a decent-sized town of 50,000 in southern France, just a few miles from the Mediterranean coast and the city of Marseille. Basketball ran in the family. His older brother, Maxence, represents their dad’s home country internationally, representing Côte d’Ivoire.
As one of the four foreign-born players on the roster, his journey to this moment was a lot different than most. He didn’t go through the American AAU and high school circuits before embarking on a college career, he played for youth clubs as a teenager and built his NBA stock overseas.
In fact, from the age of 6, he played in the Saint-Charles Charenton development program, similar to the way the big European soccer clubs do with young players. By the time he was in his teens, he was rubbing elbows with some of the best young talent in France, including future teammate Mo Diawara and lottery pick Tidjane Salaün.
He moved on in 2020, joining the youth program of Centre Fédéral before eventually joining Paris Basketball in 2021-22, where he was a star for their U21 team at just 16. In that season, he was even recalled for eight games to play sporadic minutes for the premier club in LNB Pro A as one of the youngest players in Europe.
His upward trajectory was stalled when he looked to leave France as a whole, signing with Ratiopharm Ulm in Germany, but his debut was delayed several months due to a contract dispute. He was also relegated to their farm team, which played in Germany’s third level of competition.
In 2023-24, he finally got a chance to be a regular starter for a strong European club, and while his stats didn’t pop out, he fit the mold of what teams were looking for in an international player: a raw, versatile wing with all the right physical traits.
After Victor Wembanyama and Bilal Coulibaly went in the lottery in 2023, there was a run on top French talent in 2024, with Alex Sarr, Zaccharie Risacher, and Salaün all going in the top 10. Add in the non-French prospects going in the lottery, like Matas Buzelis and Nikola Topić, and the conditions were right for Dadiet to slip into the first round, so after the Knicks traded out of No. 24 (and later No. 26), they decided to use their first first-round pick in three years on Dadiet at No. 25.
The Knicks have had a history of drafting French natives in the first round, a history that has, unfortunately, been pretty bleak. Frédéric Weis is one of the most infamous picks in franchise history, selected 15th overall in 1999 just after the team’s improbable run to the NBA Finals. We all believed in Frank Ntilikina, who was picked eighth in 2017, but he was out of New York after his rookie contract.
It didn’t help that the team’s aversion to the second apron contributed to them drafting Dadiet. He agreed to a buyout with Ratiopharm Ulm to immediately sign with the team instead of being a draft-and-stash, and as such, the team asked him to take just 80 percent of his Year 1 slot value, the absolute minimum, to save $900,000 against the salary cap.
He agreed to the move, one that’s relatively unprecedented, and it resulted in the Knicks being able to acquire Karl-Anthony Towns. How about that?
Dadiet had a quiet Summer League, and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to play much as a rookie, especially with Tom Thibodeau as coach. He was raw, he wasn’t really ready, and his minutes were limited, even if he was technically in the Opening Night rotation in the 2024-25 opener against Boston, albeit briefly.
In his first two seasons, it’s been more about what he’s done down in the G-League and over the summer. He had consecutive 30-point games down in Westchester in March while occasionally suiting up for the big league club.
Over the last two seasons, Dadiet has only played in 47 games, scoring just 78 points. He’s scored double figures just twice, and one was in a garbage-time barrage in Denver. Even in this postseason, where he’s played seven games and has put up a higher points-per-game average due to just how many blowouts the Knicks had, he didn’t log a minute in the NBA Finals.
He still has two years remaining on his rookie contract, but even as the first two years of his NBA career haven’t resulted in much, he’s made some history.
Because newly drafted players come into the league much younger than they did in the 1970s, Dadiet is the youngest NBA champion in Knicks history, barely beating out his countryman Diawara. He’s not able to buy a drink in the United States until late July.
He’s also added his name to the list of Knicks’ first-round picks to win a title, a list that includes a legend of the game in Clyde Frazier. He also now has a 12.5% chance of becoming a senator like Bill Bradley, if the rules follow accordingly.
Congrats, Pacôme!
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(P&T will be doing player-by-player article tributes over the next few weeks to commemorate the special team that ended our long, half-century nightmare)
