For the first time in his NBA career, Boston Celtics big man Kristaps Porzingis appears to truly feel at home. The Celtics are one of the best teams in the league so far this season and look like legitimate NBA contenders.Porzingis’ presence is an important reason for this.
He played well on both ends of the floor, providing intimidating rim protection on defense and scoring efficiently on offense. In Boston he plays a complementary role to Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the two stars of the team. Playing against them, Porzingis averaged 18.9 points per game, his lowest since his second season in the NBA.
The 2016/2017 season was also the last time he did not average twenty points per game in a season.That’s probably something the younger version of himself wouldn’t have been happy about. During a show at J.J. On Redick’s “Old Man & The Three” podcast, Porzingis talked about how he has matured since his time with the New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks early in his career.
With the Mavericks, he admitted that maturity was a big reason why things didn’t work out. He was brought in as a co-star, from 1B to Luka Doncic’s 1A, but it wasn’t something he accepted easily. As a result, the Mavericks traded him to the Washington Wizards, where he spent a season and a half before being traded to the Celtics this off season.
There are certainly some things from his tenure in Dallas that Porzingis would like to correct. However, the one thing he could change the most in his career was requesting a trade from the Knicks years ago. As Porzingis detailed, numerous events led to his move out of the Big Apple. The choice of his own coach for rehabilitation and the involvement of his brother, who was his representative, certainly did not help.At the time he was only 23 years old and still had a lot to learn and develop.
Given the growth and experience he has gained in the years since, he can look objectively at how things went down with the Knicks and take responsibility for the role he played in the relationship that soured that way.There are certainly still mixed feelings, at least among Knicks fans, as Porzingis was a foundational player for the franchise and made its first and only All-Star team before tearing his ACL.
No one can imagine how things would have turned out without the quasi-trade request, but both sides have ended up in good positions since then.
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