The New York Knicks began their title defense this summer shopping for size, and on Saturday, they finally put a contract on the table — just not for a player they can simply sign.
New York extended a two-year offer sheet to Dallas Mavericks restricted free agent center Moussa Cisse, kicking off a match window that runs through Monday. Cisse’s salary for next season would be half guaranteed, with the 2027-28 season fully non-guaranteed.
That clock is the whole story. The Knicks have identified their young center of choice, but Dallas retains the right to erase the move with a signature — and the structure of the offer suggests New York knows it.
The terms: a minimum-level deal with soft guarantees
New York’s offer is a two-year deal at the minimum, which represents the outer limit of what the champions can put on the table this summer. The partial guarantees are not an accident either.
A half-guaranteed first season and a non-guaranteed second give the Knicks flexibility if Cisse does not stick in the rotation, while still handing the 23-year-old his first standard NBA contract after a season spent on a two-way deal.
For a franchise that spent its offseason watching money fly around the center market, a minimum-level offer sheet is less an act of confidence than an act of necessity. The rest of the league has reset the price of backup size, and New York’s championship payroll left it no room to compete on dollars. The bet is that opportunity — real NBA minutes behind an aging depth chart — does the recruiting instead.
A summer-long search finally lands on a name
Saturday’s move did not come out of nowhere. In addition to signing veteran Andre Drummond, the Knicks have spent the summer hunting for a young, athletic big man, and had pursued both New Orleans center Yves Missi and Charlotte’s Moussa Diabate on the trade market before agreeing to terms with Cisse, per Jake Fischer.
The urgency traces back to the start of free agency, when Mitchell Robinson departed for the Boston Celtics and left the champions without their longtime interior anchor. Drummond addressed the immediate hole. Cisse is the swing at something longer-term.
The pursuit also runs against the market’s grain. Just one week ago, a Cisse signing was described as effectively impossible, reasoning that a booming backup center market meant Dallas would never be outbid by a team in New York’s cap position.
The Knicks’ answer, it turns out, was not to outbid anyone. It was to force Dallas to make the decision itself.
Who Moussa Cisse is
Cisse, 23, went undrafted in 2025 after a five-year college career that started at Memphis, ran through Oklahoma State and Ole Miss and finished back at Memphis. His calling card has always been defense — he earned Big 12 co-Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2022 — and that translated quickly in limited NBA action.
As a rookie on a two-way contract, Cisse averaged 4.5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game on 57.4 percent shooting across 38 appearances for Dallas. The production came almost entirely as a rim-runner and shot-blocker, the archetype the Knicks have been chasing all summer.
New York fans got a live look in January, when Cisse turned in one of his best outings of the season at Madison Square Garden against the team now trying to sign him. The offer sheet suggests that night left an impression.
Why Dallas holds the cards
The Mavericks saw this coming. Dallas extended Cisse a qualifying offer on June 29, converting him to a restricted free agent with a 2026-27 cap hit of under $2.2 million and securing the right to match any outside offer. The reasoning was straightforward: Cisse represents cheap frontcourt depth behind Daniel Gafford, with Dereck Lively II still working back from foot surgery.
The mechanics favor Dallas too. Because offseason rosters can expand to 21 players, the Mavericks can match New York’s offer without clearing a spot or making any corresponding move right away. Matching a minimum-level deal costs Dallas almost nothing in real terms.
That is what separates this situation from the summer’s other offer-sheet drama. When the Memphis Grizzlies handed Golden State restricted free agent Quinten Post a three-year, $30 million offer sheet earlier this month, the Warriors let him walk rather than pay the freight.
New York could not build that kind of poison pill. The champs offered what they had, and what they had was the minimum.
Because it is the offseason and NBA rosters can stretch to 21 players, Dallas has the ability to match New York's offer to Moussa Cissé without making an immediate roster move.
The Knicks offered a two-year minimum deal … essentially as far as the newly crowned champs can go. https://t.co/JRjj65A0ZV
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) July 18, 2026
Still, “essentially as far as the newly crowned champs can go” cuts both ways. If Dallas hesitates at all — on the roster spot, on the guarantee structure, on its own crowded center depth once Lively returns — Cisse walks for nothing, and New York lands its young big without surrendering a single asset.
The Mavericks have until Monday to answer. Either the champions get their center of the future at the league’s lowest possible price, or Dallas quietly closes the door with a signature — and sends New York back to a market that has been picked clean for weeks.
