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The Sad Reality of Kristaps Porzingis

The opening of the NBA season has come and gone.  There were some awesome performances.  There was heartbreak.  And then, of course, there were also some duds.  But nothing, and I mean nothing, was sadder than watching the Knicks get pummeled into submission by the new look Thunder, which included former Knick, Carmelo Anthony dropping 22 points in a 105-84 disaster.  It’s not just that the Knicks have been dysfunctional since lord knows when, or that they traded away Melo for a pair of worn out shoes and some duct tape.  It’s not even that they are a bad basketball team (only sort of, I guess). It’s that they have one of the most fascinating, eccentric, entertaining, young players in the entire league in Kristaps Porzingis, and they have surrounded him with possibly the worst supporting cast in the league.

It’s been said a million times already in a million different ways this week, but Giannis Antetokuonmpo was mesmerizing in his opening game against the Celtics. The Greek Freak’s 37 points and 13 rebounds on route to a 108-100 win against the Celtics secured his spot in this year’s MVP conversation (if he wasn’t already under serious consideration).

Antetokounmpo slithered and glided his way through traffic, taking any and every Celtics defender off the dribble and into the paint.  And he made it look easy.  Even without an outside threat, Giannis was able to get whatever he wanted.  Of his 22 field goal attempts only four were taken from outside the paint.  How do you defend a player when you can’t even limit his greatest strength?  Trick question: you can’t.  To top it off, when the game mattered most, the Freak took control, scoring 16 points in the 4th quarter and drowning Celtics hopes late with an easy little pass to Dellavedova to all but seal the game.

Only time will tell whether or not the Bucks can be true contenders in the East.  They beat a pretty good Celtics team on Wednesday night, but a Celtics team with a bunch of new parts and one that lost their second best player on opening night. The Bucks will get an even greater test tonight against Lebron and the Cavs, and how they respond should give us a good early season indication of where this team is.

More importantly, however, is the fact that the Giannis experience just hit full tilt.  Everybody’s got Giannis fever. Part of it’s what he did last year in the playoffs, and part of it is that he’s just a special player about hit maturity surrounded by a young talented core.  We felt the same way about KD and Russ.  We felt the same way about a young Lebron.  And we felt the same way about Shaq in the mid 90’s.  All of those players were players you saw coming and it was magical to watch them become great.

Back to Porzingis. My guess is a lot will be made of his inefficiencies this year.  In the Knicks opening night contest he only shot 11 for 25 (44%) from the field and 2 of 6 from deep.  However, the true inefficiency doesn’t lie in the lap of Porzingis at all but in the laps of his teammates.  The Knicks have no legitimate second scorer (or third scorer for that matter). They do not posess a talented distributor.  And they don’t even have a spark plug, someone like Lou Williams, who can occasionally bear the offensive burden while Porzingis takes a five minute blow.  Tim Hardaway Jr. and Courtney Lee don’t count. Whatever inefficiencies plague the Zinger this year have to be considered in the context of his situation. Whenever Porzingis leaves the court his team is going to get crushed.  And whenever Porzingis is on the court, his team is going to struggle because they just don’t have the guns to keep up.

And that’s what is so sad about the Kristaps Porzingis situation right now.  Porzingis is an incredibly talented player.  Maybe he’s not as talented as Giannis, or any of the players I  mentioned above, but how in the world do we know how good he is? His supporting cast is less than sub par.  Give him a Malcom Brodgon, a Thon Maker, or a Khris Middleton, guys who are young and above league average and maybe we’d actually have a clue. 

The only thing we know about Porzingis is that the 7″3 Latvian unicorn was born to be a star of the modern NBA.  He can rebound.  He can shoot from distance.  He can drive.  He can post up.  He can defend the rim while also guarding multiple positions.  And he’s even got some nasty to him.

Porzingis showed off everything he had on Thursday night against the Thunder, dropping 31 points and grabbing 12 rebounds.  Unfortunately, the Knicks still lost by 21.

Somehow young talent seems to get wasted in the NBA far more often than it should.  Just ask Boogie Cousins, Anthony Davis, Paul Pierce, Chris Paul, etc.  It happens time and time again.   The Knicks opener Thursday night was depressing because the Kristaps Porzingis experience should be something like the Giannis experience.  The sad reality is it’s nothing like it and it’s nowhere close to even being in the same ball park.  The Knicks young nucleus consists only of rookie point guard Franky Ntilikina and second year forward Willy Hernangomez.  Ntilikina played 8 minutes against the Thunder tallying one assist and zero points.  Willy Hernangomez, who was supposed to play a bigger role this year after playing well in limited minutes last year, played all of four minutes hitting one three pointer.

Maybe the Knicks will tank this year, and a player like Marvin Bagley, Michael Porter or Luka Doncic will fall into their laps.  And maybe Ntilikina will eventually turn into a good player, ceasing the second guessing of passing on Dennis Smith and Malik Monk.  But as of right now, that’s an incredibly positive outlook on an incredibly dreary situation.  And it’s impossible not to think about the fact that this is just one more year Porzingis’ unique and amazing skillset squandering away.   It’s one more year where we don’t really know how good he is.  That’s the sad reality of Kristaps Porzingis, and I’m not sure how it gets any better.