Emotions run the gamut for Donte on West Coast
Warren shows resolve after audition to fill rotation spot gets off to rocky start
SAN FRANCISCO — A trip to central California meant two reunions for Donte DiVincenzo, one with fonder feelings than the other.
In Golden State, where the Knicks play Monday night, the sentiment toward the organization is all warm and fuzzy. The Warriors helped resurrect DiVincenzo’s career last season, providing an opportunity that got him the big payday with the Knicks, worth roughly $50 million with four years of security.
In Sacramento, where DiVincenzo played briefly in 2022, the history is soured by the Kings rescinding a qualifying offer just days before free agency.
The organization basically gave up on DiVincenzo. So before Saturday’s game in Sacramento, Tom Thibodeau had a conversation with his starting shooting guard about perspective.
“Not like anything crazy. Just something quick,” DiVincenzo told The Post. “Just a reminder, don’t get too locked in — because everyone knows you want to try so hard to beat your former team, stick it to them. But at the end of the day, when I’m at my best I’m focused on this locker room and making the right plays.”
DiVincenzo then dropped 15 points against the Kings. He didn’t shoot well — missing 11 of his 16 attempts, continuing a cold stretch for the 27-year-old — but the Knicks won and DiVincenzo improved to 5-1 against the Kings since they dropped him.
DiVincenzo said the matchup felt more personal last season while “it was still kind fresh of them going in a different direction.” On Saturday night, following his chat with Thibodeau, “It was clear for me mentally, I wasn’t worried about what they had going on over there,” DiVincenzo said.
The Warriors reunion is all love. Stephen Curry helped recruit DiVincenzo and they all stay in touch.
“I watch a lot of their games because they’re on the West Coast so we play our game and they’re usually on afterwards,” DiVincenzo said. “Keep in touch with a lot of those guys. That’s pretty much it. It’s just a personal relationship rather than — there’s no like extra motivation or anything like that.”
DiVincenzo averaged 9.4 points in his lone season with the Warriors, although the team’s campaign was derailed by Draymond Green punching Jordan Poole in a practice.
“Everybody had been there for so long. Me, I’m just coming in. I was try to keep my head down,” DiVincenzo said. “I was trying to spread as much positivity as I could. And I still talk to everybody. I talk to Draymond. I talk to Jordan. It is what it is. It happened.”
➤ With Julius Randle still out indefinitely, DiVincenzo remains the No. 2 scoring option for the Knicks but his current slump — which resulted in 33.8 percent shooting the last eight games — necessitated help from newcomers.
Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks finally got off the schneid on Saturday against the Kings. And while the bar is low — they shot just a combined 8-for-21 — it was necessary to victory because Jalen Brunson couldn’t play 48 minutes and their production was timely in the fourth quarter.
“It’s huge for us. We know both guys are gifted shotmakers,” Thibodeau said. “It’s hard with inseason trades, but you know what they’ve done throughout their careers. We’re fortunate to have gotten them. [Saturday] was a good day because those are big shots, and they’re timely shots.”
Burks had logged just over four minutes in the previous game in Portland, the fewest minutes for him in five years. It was the culmination of an ugly stretch of games soon after he was acquired from the Pistons.
But in Sacramento, he played over 18 minutes and the Knicks outscored the Kings by 13 points with Burks on the court.
FORT MYERS, Fla. — In a perfect world, Will Warren would have shown the Yankees what he was made of without failing to make it out of the first inning Sunday.
But that was the position in which Warren found himself, and the young right-hander still made a strong impression anyway as he continued to make his case to fill Gerrit Cole’s spot in the rotation to begin the season.
In what was likely his penultimate start of the spring, Warren got knocked on his back in the first inning against the Red Sox at JetBlue Park. He faced seven hitters and recorded only one out, and while his defense was no help with a pair of fielding errors, he also gave up some loud contact.
Aaron Boone pulled Warren with his pitch count rising and the Red Sox leading 5-0, but spring training rules allowed him to return for the second inning, when the 24-yearold got back to work.
Seemingly unfazed by the rough first inning, Warren responded by retiring eight of the next 10 batters he faced to make the best of the situation.
“Certainly a struggle [in the first inning], but kind of showed us who he was,” Boone said. “I thought he was pretty sharp the rest of the way. Unfettered. In fact it’s times like this you learn a little more, even more about a guy. I think he’s really good. I think he’s really good right now.”
Knowing what was on the line in this start — his first since the Yankees got the diagnosis on Cole’s elbow issue that will sideline him at least until the end of May — Warren could have gotten flustered by the Red Sox ambushing him in the first inning or the two errors behind him. Instead, he exuded the quiet confidence the Yankees have liked about him and found a way to settle into his outing, striking out five while building his pitch count up to 68.
“I think that goes into the factor of proving that you belong there,” said Warren, whose costliest mistake was a hanging slider that Trevor Story crushed for a threerun homer. “When you get hit in the mouth, how do you bounce back? How do you respond to how bad the first inning was, in my opinion, to how the next couple look? At the end of the day, you gotta keep your team in the game. That’s what that next second, third inning portrayed.”
Since the start of camp, multiple people around the team have indicated a belief that Warren was ready to pitch in the big leagues. That notion has not lost any steam throughout the spring, only taking on more significance now that the
Yankees actually have a rotation spot up for grabs.
Luis Gil, Cody Poteet, Luke Weaver and Clayton Beeter (who pitched behind Warren on Sunday, giving up three runs across four innings) are also in contention to fill the fifth starter job.
But the way Boone talked about Warren before and after Sunday’s game was reminiscent of how he often sounded talking about Anthony Volpe around this time last year when the shortstop was trying to make the team.
“I’m overstating it, but I sometimes feel like when I meet a young player that’s maybe not there yet — and it can look a lot of different ways — it’s like, ‘That guy’s a bigleaguer,’ without even watching him,” Boone said before the game. “I kind of have that feeling about Will. … Then now seeing how he goes about things, he’s got an edge, a competitive edge to him.”
GM Brian Cashman on Saturday had cited Warren not being overwhelmed or intimidated by anything, and handling things well in situations where his heart rate might increase. Sunday offered another example of that in how Warren responded to things going haywire in the first inning in his first taste of pitching against the Red Sox, albeit in a Grapefruit League game.
“I told him, I feel like that’ll be one of those that you always remember your first Red Sox game,” Boone said. “I think he’s going to be really good. I think he’s going to have a career in this game. That’ll be one of those he can share with people: ‘Yeah I went down and took my lumps down at JetBlue [Park] in spring.’ I liked how he responded from it. In the end, he got a lot of good work in and we build from here.”