The Porzingis Era Comes to an End
Kristaps Porzingis sure knows how to steal the show. The entire league was knee-deep in Anthony Davis speculation when the news broke that the 23 year-old Latvian big man, who hasn’t suited up in nearly a year, had asked the Knicks to trade him. Then, minutes later, it was over: Porzingis was headed to Dallas in a multi-player deal that lands the Knicks two first-round picks, Dennis Smith, Jr., and DeAndre Jordan.
Only a few days ago, Porzingis was New York’s cornerstone, a budding star with seemingly limitless potential who could help lure a free agent like Kevin Durant over the summer. Knicks fans, who over the last five years or so have gone from insufferable to long-suffering, had hope. They had a figurehead. They had something to be proud of that gave the franchise, and they themselves, some direction. What’s more, under David Fizdale this year’s squad had shown flashes of promise, and would presumably only get better—maybe even attain respectability—when Porzingis returned.
But the Knicks were also still the Knicks, a dysfunctional, diseased organization incapable of not shooting themselves in the foot and, as was the case with Porzingis, inspiring little to no confidence in its players. Friction between Porzingis and Phil Jackson, whose time with the Knicks did irrevocable damage to his reputation and legacy, was in large responsible for Jackson’s ouster. As inept as their front office and ownership are, they knew better than to risk alienating their most galvanic player since Carmelo Anthony.
That doesn’t mean they knew how to avoid it, though. Porzingis was unhappy with the franchise’s direction and, given the Knicks’ recent history, skeptical that change was even possible. It didn’t matter that Porzingis, who is a restricted free agent this summer, had absolutely no leverage. The Knicks could easily have forced him to stick around and tried to patch things up. Instead, they immediately acquiesced, either because the situation was hopeless, or at least felt hopeless to them—yet another sign of the ineptitude and lack of imagination that has haunted the Knicks since the 2000s.
Who knows what Knicks management said to Porzingis to try and assuage his concerns. Given how long these rumors have been floating around, there may not have been anything left to say. If it’s true that the franchise’s very DNA played a role in Porzingis’s trade demand—if any iteration of the Knicks, at least as long as James Dolan owns the team, is highly suspect—there may never have been anything they could have said. It wasn’t about these Knicks but the very idea of being a Knick. It wasn’t just that Porzingis couldn’t see this team succeeding. His perception was that being a Knick is antithetical to every cliché about winning culture and institutional excellence.
It used to be annoying as hell when Knicks fans assumed every free agent of note would consider signing with their team. Now, it’s kind of endearing, like when a child thinks everyone is their best friend. The fan base alternates between self-deprecating realism and a peculiar optimism that is born out of trauma—denial, sure, but also the genuine belief that things can improve because the alternative is unthinkable. They know exactly what their franchise is, what it has inflicted upon them and itself, and this is exactly why they insist that the Knicks are anything other than the perpetual death-spiral of an organization whose doom, as evidence by Porzingis’s exit, has become a self-fulfilling. The Knicks are why the Knicks can’t have nice things. This episode, which should be devastating, instead only strengthens the belief that the cap space it frees up can be used on a marquee name this summer. Where a sane person would see a roster that has lost its most impressive asset, thus downgrading it as a free agent destination, Knicks fans (endearingly) and the front office (foolishly, maybe cynically) figures this increases their chances of improving.
It may not just be about the Knicks, though. Kawhi Leonard’s bizarre, nearly year-long absence from the Spurs last season and the ongoing Davis saga suggest that elite players are now more emboldened than ever when it comes to trade demands. It doesn’t matter if there is no imminent threat of losing them in free agency. All a player needs to do is make his intentions down the road clear, at which point teams would rather make a deal rather than forestall the inevitable and potentially watch the player’s value decline as pressure to make a deal mounts. In the case of Leonard, simply refusing to suit up was the nuclear option. It worked, which explains the rumor that Davis was considering it as well. Faced with this situation, what is an organization going to do? Fine their star and risk tarnishing their reputation with other players?
According to reports, the Pelicans saw the silver lining and considered sitting Davis a prime opportunity to tank, as well as a way to guard against his getting injured. With superstars eager to—and in many ways forced to—team up in the Warriors Era, a player like Davis or Leonard may be a luxury that middling teams simply are not afforded. There will be a clustering of talent at the top of the standings, a stagnant mess at the bottom, and nothing in-between except for formerly bad teams who strike gold in the draft and get to enjoy having a franchise player until they established their value and can request to be shipped off to greener pastures. In this model, even tanking becomes pointless unless a team can simultaneously add top talent via the draft and free agency and, in effect, go overnight from nothing to very much something.
The Porzingis situation is an even more extreme case. Leonard and Davis were a year and a half away from unrestricted free agency. Porzingis will be restricted that summer, and a team not re-signing a player of his caliber in this scenario defies precedent. The entire system is set up so that young talent sticks around and at least gives the team a chance to build around them. But don’t expect this to become the norm. If anything it speaks to what an exceptional franchise the Knicks are—ironic, given how much their fans, until recently, loved to engage in exceptionalism—and how much their track record has become an immutable identity. It’s a dismal state of affairs and a cautionary tale for other franchises: If they plunge themselves into darkness over and over again, at some point it may become impossible for them to find their way back to the light.
