Donte DiVincenzo responds to rumors about his departure from Knicks

Donte DiVincenzo was reportedly unhappy with the New York Knicks before he was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves, but the guard is now going on the record to dispute that.

DiVincenzo said ahead of Sunday’s preseason game that there was no truth to claims that he was unhappy with the prospect of being replaced by Mikal Bridges in the starting lineup ahead of the new season. The former Villanova star added that he had not even given much thought to his role, as nothing had been established yet.

“I don’t know how that kind of picked up speed but it’s completely untrue,” DiVincenzo told Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. “You can look at the team I’m on right now — there’s going to be some games I start, and there’s going to be a lot of games I come off the bench.

“Obviously everyone wants to start coming off the season I had last year, but I also understand that there’s different lineups and different combinations that teams want to get to — I understand that. It was never a thing of, ‘Oh, we got Mikal, I’m pissed off.’ I was super excited. … There was never a conversation of my role was going to be diminished. There was never a role that my minutes would be diminished. It was the outside assumption and ran with it and it was untrue.”

DiVincenzo started 63 games for the Knicks last season, but the assumption was he would head to the bench after the trade for Bridges. Some reports claimed DiVincenzo was unhappy about that, and he was shipped to the Minnesota Timberwolves as part of the Karl-Anthony Towns deal.

DiVincenzo averaged a career-high 15.5 points per game for the Knicks last year, and he shot 40 percent from three-point range for the first time in his NBA career.