The Weekside: The Carmelo, Porzingis odd couple is a dream for Knicks fans

New York Knicks fans booing a draft pick isn’t news. They do it every year, or thereabouts, so it was a lock that they would offer up a Bronx cheer on draft night when the team used the fourth overall pick on the unknown, 7’3″ Kristips Porzingis of Latvia.

It didn’t help that New York GM Phil Jackson later used Shawn Bradley’s name as a reference point when trying to describe then 19-year-old Porzingis as an incredibly tall player with great shot-blocking ability and shooting range.

Knicks fans came around quickly though.

Porzingis started making put-back dunks routine as soon as he stepped on the court and threw down a vicious, athletic follow dunk off a rebound against the Toronto Raptors. This was not Shawn Bradley and in fact looked like the future of the franchise before Thanksgiving. He even hit what appeared to be game-winning 3-pointer against the Hornets at the buzzer.

That shot was waved off — he released it too late — and the team lost.

But more important than one win or loss in a transition year was how Carmelo Anthony reacted. The Knick superstar was downright glowing, smiling wider than the joker at the sight of his skinny, baby-faced giant of a teammate coldly drilling a clutch trey like he was born to do it. And this was after an out-of-bounds play that should have gotten Anthony the ball. Instead Porzingis, being young and dumb probably, broke the play, leaving ‘Melo without a chance to get free. But Carmelo just rolled with it, doing his best to screen two men and let Porzingis get up a clean look.

The smile was a small show of support and admiration for a teammate who was coming for his star status. But it was meaningful. Even then, it was obvious that Porzingis was the truth and that an aging scorer would eventually — if not this season then soon — be supplanting him in the hearts and minds of Knicks faithful.

Carmelo hasn’t let this affect his play, still putting up great numbers (although taking a few less shots per game) and looking more engaged than ever as he starts the early transition into older-player status. Unlike some who would see staying ahead of the young’n as a challenge, Melo seems to be excited to finally, for the first time in his career, have someone on his talent level playing alongside him.

The two are working well together on the court, with the team scoring at an impressive clip of 105 points per 100 possessions during the 851 minutes they have shared the floor. And even as Anthony sacrifices shots, he is rebounding at a career-best 7.8 rebounds per 36 minutes while posting a defensive rating of 105, his second-best mark ever. The engagement is evident all over (see the weakside defensive focus in the video above), and Melo is taking Porzingis under his wing in other ways, too.

Against the Atlanta Hawks, a team the Knicks beat twice in the past week, Kristaps got tangled up with Kent Bazemore. The Hawks forward was a bit animated and ripped the ball away from the young Latvian as the play was concluding. Porzingis did not care for this behavior and got up in Bazemore’s face to let him know.

Carmelo was the first one over to his big man’s defense, pushing Bazemore back and jawing at any Hawk who would listen. This isn’t someone you can trifle with, Melo seemed to be insinuating, because this guy is going to be a star and, more than that, this guy is my teammate. It was the type of behavior you might see from someone like Dahntay Jones during young Melo’s days in Denver and typical of a lesser talent who is willing to go to war for the team’s primary player.

There is no doubt that Porzingis is on a path to stardom. He might even make the All-Star Game as a rookie. Anthony even offered up a vote for him on Twitter. So the franchise — finally — looks to have real hope.

But what Knicks fans should be most thrilled about is the budding respect, relationship, and dare we say friendship developing between the team’s two best players. Despite what many would think initially, Anthony likely doesn’t want to leave a team that looked rudderless until about a month ago. He loves New York, has not asked out, and has a no-trade clause even if the team did want to trade him for younger assets.

Rather than stand in the way of the Knicks future, however, he is helping develop it. He is loving his new lot in life even if that means sharing the spotlight. After several seasons stuck in a bad spot, Anthony is having fun again — all due to an unlikely foreign kid that he truly respects unexpectedly showing up to work beside him.

Now that he has a running mate, Carmelo is defending his position and defending his lil’ buddy. There won’t be any banners hung in the Garden at the end of the year, but these factors are creating a dream season for a franchise in transition to the Porzingis Era.

Around the Association

Atlanta Hawks

A schedule quirk has had the Hawks squaring off with the Knicks seemingly every few nights of late. You would think this would be welcome news for an Atlanta squad that should be the second-best team in the East. And it was for the first meeting as the hometown Hawks won by 19.

Then the Knicks took the next one and … the next one, winning back-to-back contests by a combined 20 points. New York has been steadily improving and is inching its way into the Eastern parity cluster, but this is still not a good look for ATL.

Boston Celtics

It was all good just a week ago. The Celtics were starting to look good, winning four straight and prompting superfan Bill Simmons to look at an easy stretch of schedule ahead and start thinking his team may soon differentiate itself from the Eastern Conference parity cluster after the Cavaliers.

Then they lost to teams like the Nets and Lakers — at home (!!!) — and are now 3 games back of the 2-seed and just a half game away from falling into 9th. So … don’t count those chickens and stuff.

Brooklyn Nets

Your Brooklyn Nets, who have reduced Joe Johnson to a shell of a person and made him question existence.

Charlotte Hornets

It’s official: Crying Jordan will still be funny in 2016 and 2017 and 2018 and 2019 and …

Cleveland Cavaliers

When the early returns on All-Star voting were released, John Wall went out of his way to question a process in which Kyrie Irving, who had barely played to that point this season, was ahead of him in fan voting.

It was a reasonable complaint, even if Wall had been underperforming early in the season with his team playing awfully. Most of all, there is simply no good way to publicly say, “I don’t think the guy who is more popular than me should be more popular than me.” But Wall has ramped up his play after a poor start and was even named Eastern Conference player of the month in December.

But Kyrie certainly couldn’t have enjoyed the comments, so he must have taken great glee in outdueling his fellow point guard last night, scoring 33 points on just 22 shots compared to Wall’s 20 on 19 shots as the Cavs ran away from the Wizards. Kyrie was particularly deadly after a rough first quarter, going 13-for-19 with 29 points after the opening period.

Dallas Mavericks

Oh Dirk.

Detroit Pistons

Andre Drummond is — by far — leading the league in rebounds and 14th in blocks. Plus, he can make moves to get buckets in the fourth quarter like this. Be afraid, everyone.

Golden State Warriors

It’s barely January, and the Warriors are so good that the only thing really left to discuss is the future two-time MVP’s pregame antics.

Los Angeles Lakers

We all knew that Kobe Bryant’s retirement season would not be filled with glory. But it would at least be interesting to watch from a nostalgic standpoint and give Lakers fans one last year with one of the greatest players in franchise history.

But, as Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times writes, fewer people than ever in Los Angeles are watching the Lakers play. “Even Kobe Bryant’s farewell tour has not saved the Lakers from experiencing their lowest ratings in franchise history and a 23% drop from this time last season,” wrote Bolch. “The Lakers are being watched by an average of 92,000 homes in the Los Angeles market, compared to the Clippers’ average of 63,000 homes.”

Milwaukee Bucks

The current Milwaukee team remains too depressingly bad to talk about. So here is a great photo of that guy who won you a championship that one time, Bucks fans.

Miami Heat

In an overtime win against the Pacers featuring a comeback from 18 points down, the 6’6″ Justise Winslow, who coach Erik Spoelstra says is often a plus/minus team leader not by “coincidence,” got some time at power forward. It seemed like the sort of rotational oddity that can happen in a strange, extra-time game midway through a season.

But Winslow has actually been prepping to play the 4 all season, and it may become a weapon that Spoelstra starts to employ from time to time.  “We’ve played quite a bit of basketball with Justise at the four,” Chris Bosh told the Sun Sentinel about the rookie’s practice reps.

He isn’t particularly big and some thought he might not be able to play even small forward in the league. But he has excelled there all year — particularly showing way-above-rookie smarts on defense — and may soon show he can play even bigger.

Oklahoma City Thunder

It’s not just you: Even Russ has to do mental gymnastics to figure out how he actually just did the things he just did.

Phoenix Suns

Jeff Horncek is reportedly holding onto his job by strings and duct tape, and a recent nine-game losing streak (including defeats to the Sixers and Lakers) looked like it would seal his fate. So with a lot of vacation time likely ahead for a guy whose team is an embarrassing 12-25, what is a coach to do? Go bowling, of course.

Hornacek took the whole team for a night at the lanes, and it responded the following game by destroying the Hornets, hitting an ungodly 19 triples on just 33 attempts (!!!), while Mirza Teletovic (19 points), Brandon Knight (18), Devin Booker (17), T.J. Warren (17), and Jon Leur (14) all scored 14 or more points.

Talk about team building. Perhaps Hornacek can hold onto his clipboard for the whole season if his players have few more performances like this to spare …

Sacramento Kings

The Kings are as inexplicable as ever, losing to the Sixers then beating the Suns and Thunder in back-to-back games. They dropped a Warriors-esque 68 points on Oklahoma City in the first half alone, and DeMarcus Cousins was an absolute force that night, scoring 33 points and consuming 19 boards.

They did drop their next game, on Tuesday, to the Mavericks but that was on the road and it took Dallas two overtimes to best the Kings.

What does this mean? Is Sacramento, which sit just 1 game back of the 8th seed (albeit at 14-21), turning a corner? Or will they just lose tonight at home to the miserable Lakers?

They are the Kings, so I think we all know the answer.

San Antonio Spurs

The GOAT animated, as the Spurs improve to 21-0 at home this year. The 1985-86 Celtics have the best home record ever, at 40-1.

Could the Warriors finish this year with the best record ever, the Sixers with the worst ever, and the Spurs with the best home record ever? Could all these records fall in a single season?

What a time to be alive.

Words With Friends

This week’s five must-read articles about the NBA. Excerpts here — click through to read the full piece.

1. Charles Barkley on LeBron James critics, Obama gun order; “It’s exhausting being black.”
by Roy S. Johnson, Al.com
Charles Barkley, speaking Wednesday from his home in Arizona, said any calls for James to boycott basketball were “100 percent unfair.” “Say you’re Muslim or a woman or a white guy, there’s always always something [controversial],” he said. “Is everybody going to sit out every time there’s a social issue? …. “It’s exhausting being black,” he said. “When me and the brothers get together, we say, ‘This [stuff] happens every month, every day.’ There’s always racist black [stuff] to talk about. We can’t just go to work and come home like white people. Every day it’s something; it’s exhausting. We could be mad all the time.”

2. Don’t call the Spurs slow just because their pace is low
by Jesus Gomez, Pounding the Rock
While pace and shot clock use are good indicators of how a team plays in terms of possessions per game, they fail to capture the aspects of motion and speed within those possessions. To put it in other words, are possessions per game a good way to judge how fast or slow an offense truly is According to pace and shot clock usage the Spurs and the Raptors are very similar teams. Other stats, however, reveal that they are nothing alike. The Raptors average 311 passes per game to the Spurs’ 345, per SportVU data. The average touch time — how long a player holds the ball — is 2.85 seconds for Toronto and 2.58 for San Antonio. The Raptors rank third in the league in dribbles per touch at 2.39 while the Spurs rank 19th with 2.09. The Spurs are also among the leaders in speed and distance stats while the Raptors lag behind.

3. The Craft: Kemba Walker’s jump shot
by Rob Mahoney, Sports Illustrated
Walker doesn’t have the kind of shooting motion that screams for mechanical overhaul. Kreutzer, though, specializes in fine-tuning the form of professionals to make their shot as easily replicable as possible. His diagnostic starts with a player’s footwork. “Everything is built from the ground up,” Kreutzer said … After 34 games, Walker is making a career–best 35.3% of his three-pointers—significant improvement for a player who had shot 30.4% from long range just last season. When defenders have gone under Walker’s screens, he has pulled up to hit 37.5% on “punishing” three-point shots this season, according to Synergy Sports. The scouting report is changing before his very eyes, and the Hornets—now a top-10 offense after ranking No. 28 last year—are all the better for it.

4. Kings Are Building the NBA’s Techiest Arena, a ’21st Century Coliseum’
by Kurt Wagner, Recode
At the Golden 1 Center, as the new arena will be called, the technology focus is on connectivity, a serious issue in many stadiums and arenas, especially considering the dense crowds that gather during events. The new Kings arena will have 1,000 Wi-Fi access points for around 17,500 seats, just 20 percent fewer access points than the 49ers have for their near-70,000-seat stadium. Or, as the Kings explained it in a recently released report, “The network can handle over 500,000 Snapchat posts per second.” (Talk about pandering to a millennial audience!) Ranadivé says that people will be able to order food from their seats through the team’s official app, and there will be beacons located throughout the stadium to ping peoples’ phones with info like where to find the shortest restroom line.

5. The Kobe Bryant retirement tour is one big brand advertisement
by Adi Joseph, The Sporting News
These receptions are neither authentic nor disingenuous. They are a product of a modern era, equal parts hashtag-branding and experiential moments. Bryant is turning his own narrative on its head. He admits this all would be different if the Lakers were good. But they entered Charlotte at 5-26. He was sore, having played the previous night. He could not miss this photo opportunity, though. He could not miss giving 19,632 fans the chance to tell their story about seeing Kobe Bryant in his final season. Since returning from this road trip, Bryant skipped three consecutive home games. The Lakers are in Sacramento on Thursday, with the game broadcast nationally by TNT.

What to Watch For

The Bulls have the sixth best record in the NBA, and it seems like nobody cares. They are 21-12, in second place in their conference behind the Cavaliers, sitting exactly where they were expected to be before the season and seemingly starting to separate themselves from the Eastern Conference teams below them.

But in the NBA you are either a title contender or you are not, and the Bulls are decidedly not. There are many tiers to this year’s race, with the Warriors being the lone team in the first tier followed by the Spurs, also in a class of their own. Then come the Cavs and Thunder in third, each of which is capable of winning a ring but only if a lot of things go right (or, more accurately, go wrong for Golden State and San Antonio).

Then come the Clippers, again perhaps in a tier of their own, along with probably the Bulls and the Heat. But do we really trust that Chicago is actually going to maintain the high-level play they have displayed since mounting an impressive win over the Thunder on Christmas Day?

(Graphic: ESPN)

Just weeks ago, the locker room was reportedly fraying as players like Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah struggled to adjust to their new roles and increasingly tattered bodies.

Then there is Jimmy Butler, who made headlines by questioning his team’s energy and focus — something many pundits said he should have kept in house. Butler emerging as the team’s star, and one of the brightest stars in the league, is a delicate situation in which a still-young former MVP and other highly acclaimed players have to accept that they are all now looking up at Jimmy.

They clearly are. They know that. Butler had a 40-point half this week, something Michael Jordan never even did in a Bulls uniform, and recently led his team to victory over the Pacers on the strength of a acrobatic-yet-poised tip-in at the buzzer that displayed nearly all of his refined qualities in just one second.

The team is playing great right now. They are outscoring opponents by 7.3 points per game since Christmas, third best in the league, behind a torrid offensive attack that has been keyed by 39% shooting from long-range in this stretch. Even the defense, while middling overall, is stepping up, holding opponents to an effective FG% of just 46.6%, fourth best since December 25.

What they are doing now is working and it’s time for the team to keep following Butler’s lead. Step up the energy, grind on defense, and become accountable for everything.

If they do that and let this tip-in be a microcosm for the rest of the year — execute well and feed Jimmy — then they could reach a place where onlookers are actually taking them seriously as a threat to knock off the Cavaliers in the playoffs.