As you can see in the highlights above, Kristaps Porzingis had an excellent game in San Antonio on Friday night. Sure, his Knicks lost, 100-99, after Jose Calderon missed a three to win it at the buzzer, but he poured in a game-high 28 points and added 11 rebounds. Here were a couple plays from his 11-for-21 shooting night, where he showed a little bit of everything on the offensive end.
There was the range (this was close to 30 feet above the break on a catch-and-shoot with the defender getting into his grill):
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The pull-ups were impressive, too, especially because it looked like he was doing to LaMarcus Aldridge what Aldridge does to everyone else: shoot over opponents on deep 2-pointers with an impossibly high release.
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And who else besides KP could inspire this screen from ‘Melo? On an excellent ATO play trailing 100-97 with 32 seconds left, Anthony set a diagonal back screen to free KP for the alley-oop to cut the deficit to one.
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Despite all that in-game evidence showing Porzingis’ improving offensive game, it was a dead-ball situation that got us even more excited.
After a whistle in the second half, KP did this:
That’s incredibly hard to do. Porzingis effectively cradled the rebound with his foot, and without letting the ball touch the ground, he juggled it to himself before snatching it out of the air with a single mitt. We’ve seen Steve Nash do a bit of juggling during a game, but he’s not over seven feet tall, and Nash has said he thinks he could have gone pro in soccer if he had focused on it. Porzingis isn’t Steve Nash, but that little snippet of juggling the basketball reveals a lot about what he might turn into as his career progresses.
You know which other big man played soccer and credits that experience for his footwork in the post? Hakeem Olajuwon, who played as a child in his native Nigeria before eventually switching to basketball when he came to the states.
It’s not a stretch to imagine Porzingis developing similar post moves once he’s put on the requisite weight to handle the pounding in the post. We already knew Three Six Latvia had a deft touch from beyond the arc and around the rim, but the deft care he needed to juggle that basketball opened up our eyes to what a remarkable athlete Porzingis already is, and how he might channel that to become even more of a force on the court.
The sky’s the limit for the Knicks’ rookie, and little moments like his juggling exhibition Friday night just add to KP’s already remarkable potential.
