The crowded crowd at Madison Square Garden is the first thing you notice, of course, because the happy, pre-pandemic scenes always flash people with memories of the way life was. The next thing you see on this Kristaps Porzingis tape is his extreme skill and athleticism, as he breaks away from the most athletic player in the game.
Giannis Antetokounmpo holds Porzingis’ T-shirt as a middle-aged warrior would do at the local Y. Trey Burke’s Bucks franchise left the field with a smile on his face as he was substituted 7 minutes into the game, as his team was in the lead. Bucyle was the replacement.
But when Bucks’ Jason Terry jumps on the crosswalk, the Unicorn does a very unicorn thing: He stops in a penny like a wide receiver coming out of a break, splits Terry and Antetokounmpo in a deep dive to the basket , and takes the step of Quinn jumping into the air to make a high-flying dive over the Greek Freak as the camera lights flash around them.
The basket brought the host team with 31-30, with 8:51 left in the second quarter. The Knicks had a 23-31 record that entered that game on February 6, 2018 and fully expected to miss the playoffs for the fifth year in a row. But fans that night still had Porzingis, 22, in the air, postering Freak on the way to his first All-Star game as a proud member of the LeBron team. If you can’t sell the winner to your customers, you can definitely sell that kind of hope.
However, like the latest appearances of Knick’s prosperity – Linsanity in 2012, Melo’s 54-win season the following year – it ended much too quickly. In fact, it took about two seconds after that beating over Antetokounmpo before a fallen Porzingis touched his left knee. Fans could not even get out of their seats before their delight was struck by devastation.
That evening, no ticket holder would have ever thought he was watching the last field act of the song Porzingis from New York. Off the field, almost a year later, the injured Knick entered Steve Mills’ office and told team president and general manager Scott Perry that he wanted to leave and that if they didn’t change him, he would leave for Europe. The Knicks ended the deal with the Mavericks, who sent back Dennis Smith Jr., Wesley Matthews and two first-round picks. Oh, and DeAndre Jordan, who was supposed to persuade his Olympic colleagues and friends Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to fill the vast space of the Knicks cap.
Instead, Jordan joined Durant and Irving in Brooklyn, putting a rotten cherry on top of a summer that made the Knicks’ decision to make Porzingis look a little better than Charlotte’s decision to face Kobe Bryant in 1996. Over time, after Knicks signed Julius Randle with some of the money they saved for KD and Irving, the trade looked less disastrous. Entering the game on Friday night in Dallas, Randle, who is only eight months older than Porzingis, overtook him (23.2-20.7) and overtook him (10.6-9.3), although the Mavs star was beating his counterpart in terms of efficiency player (22.26 -19.73). And Marcus Morris, another signed in 2019, was traded for a late first-round pick, which ultimately helped the Knicks land Immanuel Quickley.
Smith was a disaster, and while Porzingis was a high-level Maverick when he was healthy, and while teammate Tim Hardaway Jr. started 95 games, the three Knicks players in the deal are all hired by others. team.
But if Randle claims to be a healthier and more productive striker than Porzingis in the coming years and if the Knicks hit at least one of the two draft picks in Dallas, hey, the Porzingis trade won’t prove to be such an apocalyptic event. eventually. Finally, maybe the Knicks should have called KP’s European bluff (the way the Nets should have called it Kobe’s European bluff before letting him go to the Lakers through Charlotte) and to bet that the history of his injuries would have forced him to sign up for a long-term run in New York. Time will tell.
In the meantime, if you’re a fan who wants to remember how the Knicks started developing a star draft for the first time since they were endowed with Patrick Ewing, come back and watch the video for the latest track from Porzingis Garden. Stop him only after chasing the dunk on Freak, before landing the crash and grabbing and punching the floor.
Freeze it right there in the air, and remember a fleeting moment of Knicks ecstasy before a few longer winters of Knicks agony.