Playing buy or sell with 2019-20 NBA preseason trends
Kristaps Porzingis still has a lot of rust to shake off
Through his first three games, Kristaps Porzingis only showed brief glimpses of the superstar he was before his ACL tear. He was averaging 15.3 points a night, but they were coming on 17.3 shots. He was shooting a dreadful 34.6 percent from the floor and 28 percent from 3, taking a whopping 25 attempts from beyond the arc.
The pick-and-pop game between him and Luka Doncic showed plenty of early signs of chemistry, but the Unicorn looked far too content to camp out behind the 3-point line and was missing most of his shots from long range. For every confident 3 he stepped up and drilled, there were two or three more that clanked off the iron.
Suffice it to say Nerlens Noel stopping Porzingis dead in his tracks at the rim showed how much rust he still had to shake off.
But then Thursday night happened, and while one preseason game shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all, it sure felt like the Zinger had finally shaken off those layers of rust.
In that contest against the LA Clippers, Porzingis put up 18 points and 13 rebounds in 23 minutes of action, going 6-for-9 from the floor and 1-for-3 from deep. After only attempting four free throws in his first three games, he got to the line six times against the Clips, knocking five of them down. He was aggressive on both ends, and the potential of the Dallas Mavericks‘ dynamic duo finally snapped into frame.
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Over his four preseason games, Porzingis shot a miserable 39.3 percent from the field and 28.6 percent from downtown — numbers that will undoubtedly have to improve in the regular season. But it seemed like something clicked for KP in his preseason finale, and there’s far too much chemistry at work between him and Doncic to be ignored.