Tim Bond Has Shown To Be Valuable Contributor In Second Chapter Of Career With Westchester Knicks

It’s opening night for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and the first game of Tim Bond’s rookie season. He saw quality playing time with the Vipers where he suited up in 47 games and played in 17.2 minutes per game.

Nearly five months later, Rio Grande Valley was one of eight teams in the conference semifinals. A couple weeks later, the Vipers secured their third G League championship.

After finishing his rookie season with Rio Grande Valley, Bond was set to embark on his second chapter of his professional career. The Westchester Knicks acquired the returning rights to the second-year guard and his career brought him to Westchester for the 2019-20 season. He detailed coming to Westchester and his mindset joining a new team for his sophomore season.

“It wasn’t really a bad mindset,” Bond told Ridiculous Upside. “I was really accepted from everybody. I came in on crutches. I kind of had to catch up to everybody else, but everybody welcomed me with open arms. They liked my style of play. I liked their style of play here and we just got to get it rolling now.”

He missed the first four games due to a right ankle sprain and made his season debut on November 22 against the Wisconsin Herd. As the season went on, more playing time opened up for Tim Bond. Bond went from playing 18 minutes a game in November and saw that number slightly increased to nearly 20 (19.9) per game in January.

The Westchester guard felt like he took advantage of that increased time on the court and tried to be the leader on the team.

“I feel like took advantage of it to the best of my ability,” Bond said. “Just controlling what I can control. That’s one thing I’ve started to learn a little bit more. Just controlling things I can control and let everything else fall out, so I kind of just tried to be the leader of the team when everybody was down and just tried to get everybody to follow.”

Throughout the season, Tim Bond was able to show that he could be a valuable contributor on the team. He has shown he could do a little bit of everything such as getting to the basket and can defend. Bond can hit the midrange shot, can create for others, and can push the pace. The second-year guard hasn’t taken many threes (two attempts per game), but has shown a consistent perimeter shot, as he is making 44.3 percent of his threes.

“Just by making a lot of plays and making sure everybody stays active,” Bond said. “Making sure everybody stays happy. I think the games that I start, everybody usually finishes with like 10-plus points, so I try to take that into like a good way of me just being a good point guard towards the team.”

Bond is in the final month of his second season. He has played in 86 games (four postseason games) over the course of two seasons for Westchester and Rio Grande Valley. While the 6’7” guard has felt he has improved during his time in the G League, he feels like he still has things he’d like to work on.

“I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better. I still have things that I would work on, so I’m always humble about every situation that I walk into. I feel like I can get a lot better. There’s some things that I could work on. Some things that we could work on as a team, but I feel like we’ll get it rolling one day.”