Kristaps Porzingis has put together an impressive array of highlights this season. This one might be his most complete effort.
Porzingis started the play with a massive block on Paul Millsap, then ran the floor to finish a Brandon Jennings missed three with a putback dunk to get the New York Knicks within two in overtime in Atlanta.
It was part of the closing sequence to a very strange game on Wednesday night that saw Carmelo Anthony ejected in the second quarter after taking a wild swing at Atlanta’s Thabo Sefolosha. Without Anthony, the Knicks battled back to force overtime, where Porzingis did all he could.
Porzingis and Derrick Rose did, however, sort of junk up the endgame after Kristaps’s end-to-end play. Rose slipped and turned the ball over instead of dishing to an open Porzingis near the arc with Atlanta up with under 30 seconds to play. Later, down three, Kristaps was fouled by Sefolosha while shooting a three with 3.6 seconds left.
Porzingis needed all three free throws to tie it. He missed the first, hit the second, and was called for a lane violation on his third, which he missed intentionally. New York lost, 102-98.
These individual swings in a game, though, are a small glimpse at what makes Porzingis so compelling to watch. He couldn’t come up with three straight free throws to tie it, but without his four-point swing in crunch time, New York would have never gotten that close.
