Kristaps Porzingis introduced in Boston, 'the most exciting feeling that you can get'

Kristaps Porzingis is like the rest of us, just in a different time zone. 

“It was a crazy day for me. I was about to go to sleep, and then I heard the news that the trade didn’t go through, so that kept me up for a little bit longer,” Porzingis said of following his own saga from Latvia. “But then by like 4 a.m. back home, I was like, ‘Okay. I’ll go to sleep and see what happens.’ Wake up in the morning, I saw that it happened, the trade happened, and I was just extremely excited, and extremely happy.”

Porzingis is a Celtic, an idea that will still take some getting used to around here. The 7’3” 27-year-old held up his #8 jersey for the assembled media Thursday afternoon (a number he just picked because he wanted a single digit and Boston only had 4 and 8 left from which to choose) and declared Boston was his preferred destination all along this summer. 

“The most exciting feeling that you can get,” Porzingis said of joining the Celtics and being considered a missing piece for a championship contender. “The idea of that, that's why it made it super easy and made it my complete favorite option was to come here to Boston. That fire that I got from that idea is going to gas me up for the rest of the summer.”

Porzingis is coming off his best season as a pro, which he attributes to entering his prime. 

“I think these are the best years for a basketball player,” he said. “You are physically there and mentally, you are getting to a different level … My body is maturing and getting to that age helped and I believe I have some great, high-level years ahead of me.”

Brad Stevens, Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics are banking on that being true. Trading for Porzingis is an all-in move that cost the team Marcus Smart and keeps the Celtics in a precarious financial position. They have been given the green light to spend money, but in this new financial environment, even the green light comes with caveats. Porzingis is going to have to make an instant difference for it to be worth it. 

“He’s made a living in the trail spot from the 3-point (arc),” Mazzulla said. “So it just makes our offense more dynamic to where we’re going to be able to open up some different things and I think it will take some pressure off of our team. And so it’s just a matter of what the matchups are and how we can put all of our guys in the best situation to be efficient on both ends of the floor.”

The Celtics are hoping he can make an impact on the defense as well, and that it can take the pressure off of all the bigs. Recapturing their defensive identity is key to another deep playoff run, which means the spotlight will be squarely on Porzingis to prove Stevens was right to make this gamble. Porzingis says he’s ready for whatever is thrown at him. 

“I got drafted to one of the biggest stages, if not the biggest, and had to learn a lot quickly,” said Porzingis, who went to the Knicks as the fourth pick in the 2015 draft. “It prepared me for anything, almost, in the league. And now getting traded to Boston, it kind of made me realize how much I missed being on a big stage … I feel like this is a different level of excitement in just how good the team is.”

The big stage has eluded him in recent years. Yes, he had a run with Luka Doncic in Dallas, which drew a lot of attention. But it also led to a lot of disappointment, which is why he ended up in Washington two seasons ago. There have been plenty of good reasons to criticize him over the years, and there may be more moving forward. For all the theoretical fitting in there might be in Boston, there's also the potential for it to not quite click. 

Porzingis, though, believes he has grown as a player and as a person. The ups and downs of a career that has now brought him to his fourth team, he says, have made him the most complete player he’s been. 

“You always like, look back … ‘oh I was so dumb when I was 21,’” he said. “And then you get 25, or now I'm 27, I'm thinking ‘man I was dumb a couple years ago.’ So it's always like this. You're always evolving and you're evolving as a basketball player also. So probably I'll be a much better player by 30 than I am now. So I'm looking forward to keeping that growth and keep getting better as a basketball player.”