Imagine being 25 years old and having to prove that you are not washed up. I have thought a lot about James Wiseman over the last few weeks. He’s heading (he hopes) into his sixth NBA season, playing for (he hopes) his fourth team. Along the way, he’s suffered at least two major injuries, missed an entire season due to one, and has gone from second pick in the draft to fighting for scraps on the Knicks. The trajectory is sorta Dickensian, lacking only a redemptive third act to complete the tale satisfactorily.
At 25, I was two years into marriage and parenthood and fumbling my way around a professional ladder. The résumé was starting to look okay, though, and the New York Post had not published articles about my failed attempts to fully realize my potential. I had not been accepted and rejected by three NBA fanbases. That would have been quite a heavy yoke for my young shoulders.
Today’s anniversary neatly aligns a similar player with Wiseman on my mental screen: Trey Burke.
Burke was a collegiate star at Michigan, the ninth pick in the NBA Draft, and a member of the league’s All-Rookie First Team, with votes for Rookie of the Year. He was picked ahead of Giannis, CJ, Steven Adams, Timmy, and a few other guys who will still wear NBA jerseys in the 2026-27 season.
Burke had squared off against Chris Paul and Stephen Curry and shown real potential. But after averaging 12.8 PPG in his first year, things changed. Midway through his sophomore season, coach Quin Snyder moved him to the bench in favor of rookie Dante Exum to give the second unit scoring punch and develop Exum. Burke handled the change professionally and exhibited defensive improvement, but his shooting percentages declined. The Jazz missed the playoffs.
Burke’s role shrank further. In year three, he appeared in 64 games with zero starts, averaging 10.6 points, 2.3 assists, and 1.8 rebounds in 21.3 minutes. He thrived, briefly, as a bench scorer while Exum was out, but the mid-season acquisition of Shelvin Mack and Raul Neto’s emergence squeezed him out of Snyder’s rotation. Burke sat for long stretches late in the season (including multiple DNPs), but seems to have upheld a professional attitude about the demotion.
In the offseason, the Jazz traded Burke to Washington. He played backup point guard behind star John Wall under new head coach Scott Brooks. Burke appeared in 57 regular-season games (no starts), averaging 12.3 minutes per game. He also saw limited action on a team that reached the semifinals.
Burke was in the final year of his rookie-scale contract. The Jazz had exercised the team option for 2016–17, making the roughly $3.4 million salary fully guaranteed. When the Wizards acquired him, they assumed that guaranteed obligation. After the season, Washington simply declined to extend a qualifying offer (which would have made him a restricted free agent), allowing him to become an unrestricted free agent in the summer.
New York signed him on October 11, 2017, then waived him three days later. Three days is barely enough time to learn where a team keeps the extra towels, much less convince an organization to reconsider its opinion of your professional future. Burke joined the Westchester Knicks instead, where the paychecks and crowds are more modest, but opportunity remains for a motivated player with plenty of high-test left in the tank.
He proceeded to average 26.6 points per game, which earned him another contract with the big league club in January. Once back, Burke appeared in 36 games (nine starts) and averaged 12.8 points and 4.7 assists in 21.8 minutes per game while shooting a career-best 50% from the field. He provided a scoring spark and playmaking for a Knicks team ‘in transition.’ His highlights that season included a career-high 42 points and 12 assists in an overtime loss to the Charlotte Hornets. The team finished a dismal 29-53 under coach Jeff Hornacek, but at least Burke gave us something to hang a little hope on.
I was in transition, too. During that time, I Ubered to make extra scratch while enduring the vagaries of a freelance design/marketing/web/writing career. If you needed it, I could do it—and cheap! But at night, I ferried Binghamton University students back and forth to downtown clubs and talked Knicks to anyone who would listen. During those years, if you had a driver who was irrationally optimistic about guys named Dot, Zo, and DSJ . . . might have been me. And yes, I was high on Trey, too, but he didn’t stay long.
In his second year at MSG, Burke played 33 games (seven starts) for New York before being traded. He averaged 11.8 points in 20.9 minutes (35% 3PT). He was a scoring-oriented guard who could run the offense in spurts under first-year coach David (17-65) Fizdale. Then on January 31, 2019, the Knicks traded Burke to the Dallas Mavericks as part of the Kristaps Porziņģis deal (which brought on my briefly beloved Dennis Smith, Jr.).
Burke spent the bulk of his remaining NBA career on second units, primarily with Dallas, but interrupted by a short stint with the Philadelphia 76ers in 2019–20. Post-NBA, he played in the G League with the Stockton Kings (2022–23) and Mexico City Capitanes (multiple seasons), along with stops in Puerto Rico (Mets de Guaynabo and Leones de Ponce), and China (Guangdong Southern Tigers).
Today, Burke is rostered with the Astros de Jalisco in Mexico’s CIBACOPA league. He has been with the team through the 2025–26 season (including the Basketball Champions League Americas), averaging solid scoring numbers as a veteran guard. Basketball-Reference reports that he is 33 years old.
I’m older, too, and barreling too fast toward 50 for my liking. As a journeyman like Burke, my career has had many unplanned stops. Is Posting & Toasting the writing equivalent of the Guangdong Tigers? I like to think it’s more Westchester Knicks, but you be the judge. I used to get fiercely jealous of others’ success, as if it were a verdict on my own value. Not anymore. Ever an incorrigible optimist, I imagine Burke and some other guys from the class of ‘13 watching Wiseman from afar and rooting for him. Just one more season, kid. Then you’ll break big.
Go Knicks.
