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Knicks' Porzingis has turned jeers to cheers

Kristaps Porzingis is one of the tallest players in the NBA. (Image: Keith Allison, Wiki Commons)
Roar Guru
10th January, 2016
2

When NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced Kristaps Porzingis was heading to the New York Knicks via the fourth pick in the draft, the boos rained down from Knicks fans like confetti laced with lead.

The collective mindset of the Kicks fan-base at the time was epitomised by a young fan fake-crying and giving the thumbs-down while taking selfies as Porzingis made his way to the podium.

Their frustrations were born from spending the past season watching one of the worst, and frankly boring, teams rolled out onto an NBA basketball court.

They barely had any legit NBA talent on the roster outside of Carmelo Anthony who only played 40 games due to injury.

The Knicks faithful hoped to cash in on their season of pain with someone who they could get excited about, by grabbing a big name American kid from a big name American college.

Justice Winslow from Duke, Willie Cauley-Stein from Kentucky, even Frank ‘The Tank’ Kaminsky from Wisconsin would have been greeted with cheers rather than jeers.

What they didn’t want was some foreign kid from some little European country they had never heard of, whose scouting footage consisted of YouTube clips of the Spanish league and knocking down jumpers in an empty gym.

Looking back at the history of European draft picks you could hardly blame them. While the first two European players taken in from the lottery – Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Gasol – became All-Stars, the 16 taken since have generally been underwhelming with more busts than hits.

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I was fortunate enough to chat to a few draftees soon after they had been picked at this year’s NBA Draft and my initial thoughts on Porzingis were that he was by far the ‘sweetest’ of everyone I spoke with. He was really nice and super polite.

Certainly a little too sweet to make it in the ego-driven, kill-or-be-killed world of the NBA, let alone with the added pressure of playing in the biggest city in America.

As much as I enjoyed talking to him, I thought he would be a bust.

While it’s only early in his career, it’s already evident that I, along with a sea of Knicks fans, were very wrong that day.

Porzingis has been extremely impressive so far in his rookie season and has shown he could be anything.

He is a type of player we’ve never really seen before, the prototype stretch-five, rim protector. It’s as if someone put Nowitzki, Shawn Bradley and Andrei Kirilenko into a cloning chamber and Porzingis is the result.

He is huge human being, standing a legit 7’3″, which is tall even by NBA standards, or as JR Smith poetically put it “He’s tall as shit”.

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Yet he doesn’t move like a seven-footer, instead he moves more like a small forward, with fluidity and lightness on his feet. He glides around the court so smoothly you simply forget his size and when you remember the enormity of his potential hits you like a wave.

Porzingis’ ginormous length and agility have made him an effective rim protector and rebounder even at this early stage. These attributes were projected to be his weaknesses, until (or if) he gained sufficient weight to hold his own in the meat-grinder around the rim.

His hunger and verve for offensive boards have seen him get more tip-dunks than Russell Westbrook has fashion faux-pas, frequently leaping over opposing big men for a highlight put-back.

Although the most surprising attribute he has shown is his on-court attitude. Porzingis has a healthy dose of white-line fever which quickly transforms him from Tintin with a crewcut to Captain Ivan Drago with all of his ‘I must break you’ mindset.

It’s this aggressive attitude to the game that makes you believe his impressive early form is not only sustainable but should see him vastly improve in the future.

Like all rookie big men he is a little too foul prone and his shooting, the perceived strength of his game, has been surprisingly bad. But these are merely adjustment issues and he has such a sweet stroke you have to assume he will start hitting more shots soon.

To sum Porzingis, we return to the wise musings of JR Smith” “He could be something special. He could be the next Dirk”. While he plays a different game to his Dirkness, Porzingis could revolutionise the stretch-five position much like Nowitzki did with the stretch-four position before him.

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Whether it was good luck, good recruiting or just good Zen, Porzingis has won over the New York crowd with his play, and they now look to shower him with cheers every chance they get.

Even the fake-crying, booing, selfie-kid has brought himself a Porzingis jersey, which I’m sure was christened with a selfie smile.

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