Scott Perry will not return to Knicks with contract expiring this summer, source says
Knicks general manager Scott Perry speaks with reporters at media day on Sept. 30, 2019. Credit: James Escher
Scott Perry arrived as the Knicks’ general manager in 2017, tasked with bringing stability to a franchise in turmoil. He achieved that, settling the waters and bridging the gap as a new front office took hold around him. But with his contract running out shortly, Newsday has learned that Perry is not returning.
A source confirmed that Perry will move on when his contract expires this summer. The legacy will be stability and success in an organization that had rarely seen it for two decades.
Perry joined with Steve Mills, providing a veteran basketball personnel man in the wake of the Phil Jackson era and first smoothed the exit of Carmelo Anthony, setting the team on a new path. As general manager, he drafted RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson and signed Julius Randle.
When Leon Rose arrived as team president, bringing with him his own advisers, he kept Perry in place, signing him to a contract extension in July 2021, and he remained an active voice as the team made the playoffs in two of the last three seasons. But his voice diminished with time as William Wesley, along with Gersson Rosas, who joined as a senior basketball consultant, took a more prominent role in shaping the roster.
While the Knicks have been successful in recent years with this combined leadership in the front office, there is the occasional finger-pointing, and when the team traded for Cam Reddish and then discarded him in a deal a year later blame was put on Perry for advocating for the deal — which in the end did bring Josh Hart to New York.
Perry joined the Knicks in July 2017, just three months after he was hired by the Sacramento Kings as vice president of basketball operations. The Knicks surrendered a 2019 second-round pick as compensation to bring him aboard. Perry briefly ran the entire basketball operations for the Knicks before Rose officially replaced Mills.
The deal to send Anthony away followed a long, contentious battle between the player and front office when Jackson was in charge. Perry’s biggest deal was the trade that sent Kristaps Porzingis to Dallas, landing the Knicks two first-round picks and clearing salary-cap space that allowed them to sign Randle, along with other moves that helped create the current roster.
Besides Barrett and Robinson, the Knicks also drafted Obi Toppin, Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes and Miles McBride during Perry’s tenure.
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.
