This is not how Kristaps Porzingis envisioned his season going. Yeah, he knew it would take a while to come back from surgery to repair a rare injury to his ankle. He was aware that it would take some time to ramp up and get back to his usual self. But the stops and starts thanks to some unrelated minor injuries have made the process a little frustrating.
“That's tough. You can’t control it, so it’s not on him,” Joe Mazzulla said after his team’s road trip-ending win in Denver. “He's slowly getting back into a rhythm, but you just got to continue to work at it.”
The results of that work showed in Denver Tuesday night when Porzingis came out of the gates with a 15-point first quarter. It was partly comfort, partly motivation after a disastrous end to their loss in Oklahoma City, and partly good fortune that Nikola Jokic was out sick.
“I have to play my way back into good shape,” Porzingis said. “I know this is what everybody expects from me. This is what I showed last season. And now I'm just working my way back up and, honestly, tonight was, in my opinion, like one of the first games that I felt like I'm getting close to feeling healthy, feeling good, and getting back in good shape.”
That bodes well for Porzingis, who has been honest about not feeling quite himself over the previous 13 games. He’s shooting about 33% from 3 this season, his worst percentage since Dallas traded him in the 2022 season, and 4.5% worse than last season.
“(I’m) probably, like 80-85%,” he said. “I still have a little bit to go. My shot needs to calibrate a little bit better. I haven't been shooting the ball well this season. So there's definitely things I can improve. But I know that moment is coming when everything will start clicking and I'll play really high level basketball.”
While part of the adjustment is a matter of Porzingis working on his own game, part of it is also navigating the new ways he’s being guarded. He described it as more chaotic, with more swiping at the ball and more physicality being allowed by the refs. That's not only something he has to adjust to, his teammates and coaches have to figure out how to navigate it as well.
“I thought that was, for this season, for the way the smalls are going on him, I thought it was the most physical that he was,” Mazzulla said. “I thought that was the most intentional we were about not only getting him the ball, but getting into the paint versus smaller matchups. We just gotta continue to work through those. Even at the end, they changed some matchups, we were able to recognize that.”
With Jokic and Aaron Gordon out, the Nuggets were missing the size and strength necessary to deal with Porzingis. But it also meant there were openings for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to attack. When that's the case, players have to make a conscious decision to let the flow of the game determine who gets the ball instead of watching the box score to determine whose turn it is.
“We got three guys that have a mismatch or feel like they can attack,” Tatum said. “We have to have to be mature enough to know that it might be me against a big, it might be JB against a small, it might be KP ducking in. And if KP ducks in three times in a row and gets a bucket or a foul, we got to know that's what we got to keep going to. And a majority of the time, we do a really good job just playing off each other because we know that's the recipe to get us what we want to get to.”
The Celtics did a good job of getting the ball to Porzingis in his spots. Early on, it led to scoring, but later it led to a few assists and good ball movement. Mixed in were a few possessions that Porzingis would like to have back, but this isn’t about being perfect just yet.
Porzingis and the Celtics had a bad taste in their mouths after leaving OKC. They wanted to close their road trip strong and Porzingis helped them do that with strong, physical play on both ends of the floor. It was his best game since returning from his surgery, but it won’t be the best he plays all season.
“It’s tough coming back from injury and you’re not in perfect shape but you expect a lot from yourself,” Porzingis said. “Fortunately, or unfortunately, I've been in those situations. So I know how to bounce back and try to get in the rhythm quickly. So it's still a work in progress, but I had the experience and I’m looking forward to hitting my stride.”
