Knicks’ Porzingis squashing stereotypes with putback dunks
Kristaps Porzingis knows what you were thinking, your assumption based on stereotypes: he's just a skinny white kid, a European basketball player. The formula equates to soft.
Porzingis doesn't mind those preconceived assessments. He responds like any reasonable 7-3 elite athlete with something to prove — by jumping over and through giant men for a putback jam and another cycle on SportsCenter.
"That’s a highlight. Everybody sees that," the 20-year-old tells the Daily News. "Nobody sees when you sometimes score 15 points and grab eight or nine rebounds. Nobody checks the stats but everybody sees the highlights. So now people are excited, they see I’m aggressive on the boards. They like that.
"They have a different view of me now."
Like the cornrows on his preteen head, Porzingis is lining up victims under the rim. He dunked on LaMarcus Aldridge. Then Kevin Love. On Tuesday in Toronto, he leaped over three players for a putback that was captured dramatically in a photo for every newspaper, website and screenshot.
He has, as a result, accumulated all sorts of nicknames on social media, with "Godzingis" as one of the more popular.
"You dunked on me at least twice," teammate Robin Lopez says Wednesday in the locker room.
“My fault Ro-Lo," Porzingis responds.
“As long as it goes in.”
Nine games into his career — and heading into Friday's rematch against LeBron James at the Garden — Porzingis had finished, according to ESPN, a league-leading six putback dunks, displaying a combination of athleticism, awareness and moxie.
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There was concern, especially coming out of Summer League, about Porzingis' ability to rebound. But he’s grabbing nine per game in the NBA, including a career-high 15 in Wednesday's loss to the Hornets. Plus, there's the stylish and powerful way he cleans up messes.
"I think the craziest thing is how it always seems to come out of nowhere," Lopez says. "Every time it happens, I’ve been blindsided by it. I think on every single one I’ve been under the rim or nearby.
"I don’t see anything when it happens. It’s just kind of like a collision of bodies."
Porzingis says there’s a technique to the putback dunk, a calculated leap when the ball hits the rim. But it’s mostly just “going for it.
"It’s just me, the ball and the basket," he says, "that's all I’m looking for."
Kristaps Porzingis celebrates with Carmelo Anthony.
This isn't a new phenomenon for Porzingis, just on a different stage with more attention. His coach last season at Sevilla in Spain, Scott Roth, recognized the aggression almost immediately, and how it manifested into Porzingis trying to posterize his teammates.
"In one of my early practices we did a lot of competitive drills and he would ALWAYS try to dunk on you or go through you to finish," Roth, who is currently working with the Shanghai Sharks and owner Yao Ming, writes in an email. "It showed me right away about his toughness and willingness for contact. Most young bigs at his size would have tried to finesse a putback or avoid contact."
Now the NBA is taking notice. It's already safe to conclude that Porzingis is neither the player Phil Jackson once mentioned as a worst-case comparison — Shawn Bradley — nor the grumpy draft-bust that Paul Pierce referenced in the Clippers' locker room recently — Andrea Bargnani.
"I’ve seen the dunks on highlights. When we went through the walkthrough they talked about how he’s an outstanding offensive rebounder. So he’s a force to be reckoned with," says Charlotte assistant coach Patrick Ewing. "You got to hit him before he starts going. That’s the only way to stop him. The man is 7-3. So if you don’t hit him outside the paint before he gets a full head of steam going, he’s just going to go right over top of you."
Porzingis understands they'll be adjustments from the opposition, maybe a little added physicality because, as he says, "Nobody likes to get dunked on." But he, too, will adjust as a multi-dimensional offensive threat. On the final play Wednesday at Charlotte, for instance, Porzingis was supposed to cut to the hoop off an inbounds. But he read the defense, popped out to the 3-point line and buried a shot that would've won the game had it been released a fraction of a second earlier.
Not that he'll be deterred by the threat of contact.
"That’s what they’re going to do now, but I have to find a way to avoid it and still go and be able and jump up there to get the rebound," he says. "That’s one of my skills, one of my qualities, so I still got to try to keep on doing it."
