The crowded crowd at Madison Square Garden is the first thing you notice, of course, because the blessed pre-pandemic scenes always shine on people with memories of the way life was. The next thing you see in this Kristaps Porzingis tape is his extreme skill and athleticism as he moves away from the more athletic player in the game.
Giannis Antetokounmpo holds the Porzingis T-shirt as a middle-aged middle-aged warrior would do in the local Y. Trey Burke projects the Bucks franchise player into his left elbow and his 7-foot-3 teammate frees himself from the defender above the foul line, preparing to catch a pass from Kyle O’Quinn.
But when Jason Terry of the Bucks jumps into the lane, the Unicorn does something very unicorn: he stops at a penny like a wide receiver coming out of a break, splits Terry and Antetokounmpo in a hard dive into the basket, and grabs Quinn’s bounce pass into the air for a high-flying dive over the Greek Freak as the camera lights flicker around her.
The basket put the home team 31-30 with 8:51 left for the second quarter. The Knicks held a 23-31 record in that game on February 6, 2018 and were expected to miss the playoffs for the fifth year in a row. But fans that night still had 22-year-old Porzingis on the air, who was posterizing the Freak on the way to his first All-Star Game as a proud member of the LeBron team. If you can’t sell winners to your customers, you’re sure to sell that kind of hope.
Still, like Knick’s last outbursts of prosperity (Linsanity in 2012), Melo’s 54-win season the following year, this one ended too quickly. In fact, it lasted about two seconds after that dive on Antetokounmpo before a fallen Porzingis grabbed his left knee. Fans couldn’t even get out of their seats before their delight was devastated.
That evening, no ticket holder would have thought he was attending the last act of Porzingis ’passion in New York. Out of court, almost a year later, the injured Knick walked into 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 made the deal with the Mavericks, who sent Dennis Smith Jr., Wesley Matthews and two first-round picks. Oh, and DeAndre Jordan, who was supposed to help convince his Olympic teammates and friends Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to fill the Knicks ’expanded tap space.
Instead, Jordan joined Durant and Irving in Brooklyn, putting a rotten cherry on top of a summer that made the Knicks’ decision to deal with Porzingis look slightly better than Charlotte’s decision to deal. with Kobe Bryant in 1996. Over time, after the Knicks signed Julius Randle with some cash they saved for KD and Irving, the trade has seemed less disastrous. Entering Friday night’s game in Dallas, Randle, who is only eight months older than Porzingis, outscored him (23.2-20.7) and outscored him (10.6-9.3), although the Mavs star outscored his counterpart in the efficiency rating of the players (22.26 -19.73). And Marcus Morris, another 2019 signing, was replaced by a first-round pick who ultimately helped the Knicks land Immanuel Quickley.
Smith was a disaster and while Porzingis has been a high-level Maverick when he was healthy, and while his teammate Tim Hardaway Jr. has started 95 games, the three players the Knicks received in the deal are being worked on by other teams.
But if Randle consolidates as a healthier, more productive advance than Porzingis in the next few years, and if the Knicks got at least one of those two Dallas draft picks, hey, Porzingis ’trade won’t turn out to be an apocalyptic event in the head to end. In the end, maybe the Knicks should have called KP’s European bluff (the way the Nets should have called Kobe’s European bluff before letting it go to the Lakers through Charlotte) and bet that the his history of injuries would have forced him to enroll in a long-term career in New York. Time will tell.
In the meantime, if you’re a fan who wants to remember how the Knicks began developing a draft pick to become a star for the first time since they hosted Patrick Ewing, go back and watch the video of the last play in the garden of Porzingis. Simply stop it after tracking the Freak, before the shock landing and the prey and fist hitting the ground.
Freeze it right there, in the air, and remember a fleeting moment of Knicks ecstasy before a longer winter of Knicks agony.