Phil Jackson is (presumably) enjoying retirement. Carmelo Anthony is yukking it up with Russell Westbrook and Paul George in Oklahoma City. And the New York Knicks, well they officially belong to Kristaps Porzingis.
For the past two seasons, Porzingis has been held up as a revolution about to foment but the chaos around him and the primacy of Anthony’s offensive skills have meant that Porzingis was mostly relegated to a second- or third-fiddle and his ceiling has still been very much a hypothetical.
That’s all about to change. The Knicks have shed their leading scorer and other than Enes Kanter’s post-game there is really no viable option to efficient offense other than through Porzingis’ prodigious talent. He’s going to get the shots he deserves.
Porzingis is often grouped together with Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns and Joel Embiid, all young big man with potentially revolutionary offensive skill sets for their size. However, Porzingis has had far less opportunity than the other three to get reps as a primary focus of his team’s offense.
Last season, Porzingis saw significantly fewer frontcourt touches per 36 minutes than Embiid or Jokic. Although he touched the ball more often than Towns, the latter actually finished far more of those touches with a scoring chance — as evidenced by his much higher usage rate. Porzingis’ usage rate was slightly higher than Jokic’s but that’s misleading because usage doesn’t account for all the assists Jokic generates.
Porzingis may ultimately be the best of these four players, but so far he’s been the most restricted by his environment. If we compare his minutes with and without Anthony last seasons, Porzingis’ usage rate went from about the 80th percentile for a center, to the 95th when Anthony was off the floor. Interestingly, his true shooting percentage was also higher when he played without Anthony.
Having a 7-foot-3 big who can function effectively as a spot-up shooter opens up all sorts of possibilities — and Porzingis is good in that role, scoring in the 58th percentile on spot-up possessions last season. But it sells his potential short. Twenty-two percent of his offensive possessions were used on spot-ups last season, compared to 34.6 percent on isolations, post-ups and as the roll man in the pick-and-roll, combined.
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We’ve been talking about Kristaps Porzingis as a unicorn for two seasons now. This year, without Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks are going to have to lean on all of his offensive potential and we get the chance to see it unfurl in every direction. This is what the future looks like.