How ready is NY Knicks Draft Pick Kristaps Porzingis?

VIDEO: Watch Kristaps Porzingis go badass in this play-off! Watch video below..

Coming into the 2015 draft, arguably no player drew a wider range of reviews than Porzingis. Because of his size, nationality, shooting touch and tendency to play on the perimeter, Porzingis drew comparisons that ranged from Dirk Nowitzki (on the high end) to Andrea Bargnani (on the low end).

Athletes will tell you that their bodies are their business. So how is business going for Porzingis? Very well, turns out. Young Kristaps (and he is very young, at 19) has some of the chief draft influencers in the media singing his praises. Chad Ford, in a recent SportsNation chat, mentioned that he’d heard rumblings that the Lakers are taking stock of him as a possible pick at no. 2; the Knicks are intrigued, too. Smokescreen or not, you don’t get that kind of attention if there isn’t real potential. Needless to say, those two fan bases, starved for a panacea, have been driven crazy to think that some skinny kid from Latvia is meant to be their savior.

All draft picks are crapshoots, but some feel like crappier shots than others. It’s uncouth to plainly say, “I have a bad feeling about this guy,” so we do our best to justify our vague inklings. The stronger our distaste, the stronger our effort. So of course it’s the foreigner with the spindly frame and the funny name who has people, if not intentionally, grasping at long-discredited forms of human categorization. Dig into the Porzingis analysis out there and you might come across the word “ectomorph” on more than one occasion. What a gross word to say. It means he’s built to be a thin, frail, and passive loner. It’s one of three somatotypes, body descriptions that make up a classification system based on a 70-year-old pseudoscience that sought to establish a physical and intellectual hierarchy among humans. So, yeah, it’s super gross and ridiculous and … fitting? After all, what is the draft if not the modern (and culturally acceptable) phrenological exhibition? What is the draft if not complete pseudoscience?

It was a common refrain that while he had the potential to eventually become the best player in the draft, he also had high bust potential and was not necessarily ready to contribute right away. For example, let’s look at two different paragraphs from his pre-draft scouting report at DraftExpress.

The potential:

Porzingis is one of the most unique players in this draft class, showing an impressive combination of height, length, fluidity and skills. He’s very mobile for his size, capable of playing above the rim with ease and able to cover ground quickly moving from the perimeter to the paint.

And the drawbacks:

On the downside, Porzingis still looks a long ways away from reaching his full potential here, starting with his body, which remains very frail and could make him susceptible to injuries if not developed carefully. He also lacks something in the ways of toughness and awareness, as he tends to avoid contact in the paint and regularly gets pushed around on the interior, not always offering up as much resistance as you might hope. The game moves a little too fast for him at times, and he doesn’t appear to be the quickest thinker around, often looking a half-step slow in his reaction time. All of these things show up in his surprisingly pedestrian rebounding numbers (2.4 offensive and 5.8 defensive per-40).

It’s that push and pull that made Porzingis one of the draft’s most polarizing prospects. When the Knicks selected him with the No. 4 overall pick, Porzingis was mostly greeted with a chorus of boos. Even former Knick Patrick Ewing wasn’t surprised with that reaction.

“I’m not surprised they booed him [draft night],’’ Ewing told the New York Post. “New York is New York. I’m surprised they didn’t boo me when they drafted me. They did so because they didn’t know him. They’d never seen him play.’’