Steve Popper: Knicks' Jordan Clarkson's patience pays off as he delivers scoring and defense
Knicks guard Jordan Clarkson gestures after making a three-pointer against the Nets in the second half of an NBA basketball game at Barclays Center on March 20, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It would have been understandable if Jordan Clarkson gave up this season.
He wouldn’t have been the first athlete to demand play me or trade me. He had no history with the Knicks, signing on as a free agent this summer with a chance to play for a contender, and nothing had worked out the way anyone imagined.
Playing time was gone. The clock on his NBA career was ticking. And even the fans had turned, slipping into his social media accounts and pushing him to just go away.
In the weeks leading up to the NBA trade deadline last month Clarkson sat through four games without getting a second of playing time. That deadline passed and the next key date to watch was March 1. That is when a player had to be released before that date to be eligible to play in the postseason if a team picked him up. And Clarkson was in the midst of a stretch of eight game in which he never removed his warmup outfit six times and totaled just seven minutes of action in garbage time in the two other games.
But there were no public complaints, no demands from a 33-year-old veteran with a shiny resume for playing time or a trade or even his release. Clarkson just continued to work, joining the rookies and little-used players at the end of the bench for extra work after practice.
“It is what it is,” Clarkson said of the nights left on the end of the bench. “Part of the job. I never put my head down. I kept going. I was in there every day with the young dudes, Jeremy [Sochan], all the guys. Continued to stay ready and continued to stay present and lock in still.”
It’s one thing for a 20-year-old rookie to be told to stay ready, but Clarkson was a veteran, a former NBA Sixth Man of the Year and he’d left the rebuilding Utah Jazz where he was revered by the organization and the fan base to head to a team and a coach with whom he had no connection. But Clarkson had a desire to make the remaining years of his career meaningful.
It took a return to Utah for a turn to come. In the first quarter of the game there Clarkson tried to hold back the tears as a video tribute was played in the Delta Center. He got a chance to get into the game frankly out of desperation as the Knicks, with a three-game losing streak, fell behind the lottery-bound Jazz by 19 points. And Clarkson, who had played just 27 minutes total in the 11 games since the All-Star break and scored 16 points, responded, pouring in 27 points to turn the game around.
Beginning with that night he has averaged 21.9 minutes per game, becoming one of the most prominent bench pieces for Mike Brown and the Knicks. He is averaging 12.3 points per game.
But it’s more than just the scoring punch that he was supposed to bring when he arrived in New York. When he returned to the rotation, he not only brought the ability to provide scoring off the bench, a much-needed boost behind Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, but he has added something that he hadn’t shown earlier: a hard-nosed defensive effort. And now, with more time on the floor and nearly a full season with the organization, he has provided playmaking, too.
“Yeah, for sure,” Clarkson said. “I mean, being able to get comfortable. I know everybody wanted it to click like immediately when I got here. But, you know, I’ve got to feel out a new coach, new system and everything, so, I'm getting a chance to watch the D-N-P’s and learn. It was pretty big for me and you know I continue to stay ready and just kept playing and figuring stuff out.”
With Deuce McBride just working his way back from sports hernia surgery and Landry Shamet sidelined with a bone bruise in his knee, the Knicks need all of this. Brown and some of Clarkson’s teammates have spoken of his leadership — showing that at any point in a career there are challenges and hard work is the way back.
“I will say this, there’s been better focus,” Brown said. “Not just for him, but for all of us. You can see the level of awareness and sense of urgency that he plays with now, especially on that end of the floor. What I like more than anything else is his physicality on the ball. You feel him. He’s relentless with it.
“As an old vet, he’s got that old man strength, even though he’s younger than me. He’s doing a great job of leading with his chest and not fouling . . . Put him on a point guard, put him off the ball, but his level of physicality has definitely increased the right way because he’s doing it without fouling.”
“I mean that's something we talk about as a team always, so, just continue to do that,” Clarkson said. “Try to make plays defensively and be aggressive”
To hear Brown now, it’s hard to imagine he’d ever left Clarkson out of the rotation. But to listen to Clarkson it’s maybe easier to understand how he worked his way back, rather than out.
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.
