Kristaps Porzingis called it back then, when everybody else was drinking the Kool Aid: the Knicks were winning, but they weren’t doing it as a team.
“We’re playing off our talent,” was how Porzingis described the Knicks at their peak, when they were four games over .500 and woke up in mid-December as third in the Eastern Conference.
Now look at them. A Phil Jackson-created mess at 17-20, riding a stretch of 10 losses in 13 games and sitting 10th in the East. Don’t say Porzingis didn’t warn you.
“In the moment where we four games up .500 — I said it, I don’t see ourselves as that good of a team yet,” the Latvian said in front of his locker Saturday, following New York’s latest defeat to the Pacers. “We were still growing. We were winning games. But we don’t really have that — we still have a lot to learn as a team, a lot to grow. It was just a good moment that we were up, we were winning games based off of our talent. But we just weren’t there yet and now it’s kind of showing that we’re not there yet. We’ve got to figure this out. …We want to do good, but it’s not coming together yet. It’s tough. It’s frustrating. Everybody is frustrated. We’ve got to stick together.”
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Porzingis wasn’t sounding any alarms — he later said that time is not short at this stage — but many of his concerns about effort and focus have become recurring grievances. These are athletes on eight-figure salaries acknowledging they’re rarely playing hard enough. Backup point guard Brandon Jennings has been one of the more outspoken.
“I don’t think we’ve played well at all this year. Honestly,” he said. “I don’t know if you guys are watching it how I’m watching it. We’re winning games because of our talent, but as far as basketball-wise, basketball heads, I don’t think we’re playing basketball like we should be. Some stretches we might, like two games here and there. But we haven’t been really playing like how I feel the Knicks should be playing.
“I’ve been playing like s--t,” Jennings added. “Some games I might have good games and the next game it’s like, where am I?” Jennings said. “I’ve got to find a way to bring energy to every game.”
Kristaps Porzingis knew the Knicks couldn’t stay hot forever.
(Mike Stobe/Getty Images)Still, as much as Jennings doesn’t like the developments, he acknowledged it’s not his place to address the team about such issues. He did it recently with the second unit, but Jennings, a 27-year-old in his first season with the Knicks, doesn’t want to overstep.
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“How much can I really say? I just try to just play my part,” he said.
This is where the longstanding criticisms of Carmelo Anthony’s leadership — or lack thereof — resurfaces. Anthony needed veterans in New York with Jason Kidd and Rasheed Wallace before he had any REAL success, and the 32-year-old knows he’s never going to be the emotional, rah-rah guy on the court. After Saturday’s loss, for instance, he focused much of his attention on how difficult it is to play in the second game of back-to-backs — not exactly inspiring stuff.
But that’s also why Jackson signed Joakim Noah to a four-year, $72 million deal in the summer. He was supposed to be the high-energy leader, the defensive anchor. That was before it was determined Noah would play, on average, less than half the game because he was such a liability on offense. And if Noah is inspiring his teammates and holding them accountable, he’s not saying it in interviews. He has developed a deep distrust for the New York media and refuses to engage in any real evaluations, instead giving terse and mechanical answers to each question.
That left Porzingis to serve as spokesman and realist in troubling times. The good news is that he sees a better team than last season when a January swoon — not dissimilar to the current one — finished with a 50-loss season.
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"This year is kind of different. This is a different team. It’s a different coaching staff. It’s a different feel," Porzingis said. "I feel like this year we have much more room to grow than we did last year at this point for example. We’re still just kind of starting to play together. We still have so much room to grow. But we’ve got to start to make the steps in the right direction. It’s taking us a while, but hopefully we can all stick together and keep making steps in the right direction and then, I see ourselves growing as a team and then hopefully getting to our goal, that was making the playoffs."
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