Kristaps Porzingis was back at the Garden on Friday night for the first time this season, returning with his new team, the Wizards, following a trade deadline deal from Dallas.
The spurned New York fans were ready for him again, of course, booing the former hometown All-Star before and throughout the Knicks’ 100-97 victory to leapfrog Washington into 11th place in the Eastern Conference standings.
“I enjoy this. I enjoy playing at MSG, whether it’s at home before or now on the road. It’s always entertaining,” said Porzingis, who scored a team-high-tying 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in 29 minutes. “The biggest stage, and again, receiving the boos. It is what it is.
“It’s in the past now. I love the city. I miss this city a lot. I miss a lot of people here. Yeah, it is what it is, but I really enjoyed my time here and I only have good memories from this place.”
Porzingis even shook hands with Knicks owner James Dolan after the Wizards’ late comeback bid from a 15-point deficit in the fourth quarter came up short. He admitted he was disappointed to not have taken one of the shots on the Wizards’ final two possessions — misses by Kyle Kuzma and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — that could have put the Wizards ahead or tied the game, respectively.
“Of course. As I said, this is the biggest stage,” Porzingis said. “We drew up a play, down three, and Pope got a decent look. And before that, Kuz had a decent look and was hot. It was in the flow of the game.
“We got ourselves in a decent position to fight to win the game, but just fell short because of what happened before that.”
The oft-injured former Knicks lottery pick missed the Mavericks’ lone visit to New York in January after testing positive for COVID-19, and he was shipped back to the Eastern Conference in the deal that sent Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans to Dallas.
The 7-foot-3 center wasn’t able to put together a full season alongside superstar Luka Doncic with the Mavs, never playing in more than 57 games in any of his three NBA seasons since missing all of the 2018-19 campaign with a torn ACL.
While Dinwiddie won a game for the Mavericks earlier this week with a buzzer-beater against the Nets, the 26-year-old Porzingis has averaged 19.5 points per game on 49.3 percent shooting over six appearances since the trade.
Drafted fourth overall by the Knicks in 2015, Porzingis was named an All-Star by his third NBA season before suffering a torn ACL in February of 2018. He expressed his unhappiness with the Knicks’ direction during his rehab and was shipped to Dallas — essentially in exchange for since-spent cap space and two first-round picks — nearly one year after his injury.
And the Garden faithful certainly have not forgotten.
“I think that’s just natural, you just deal with it. That’s the league. Guys get traded and there’s always energy when a guy comes back,” Wizards coach Wes Unseld Jr. said. “I think [Porzingis] handled that part fine. I think he’s still working his way back into a rhythm. Missing the better part of a month and a half of games, he’s played a handful now, but he’s still getting his legs under him.
“He’s not shooting it as well as we’d like, but I think that will come. As he gets more comfortable with what we’re trying to do offensively, I think that will make it easier as well.”