[Wall Street Journal] Please Hug a Knicks Fan Today

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/please-hug-a-knicks-fan-today-1498139342

Please Hug a Knicks Fan Today
Team president Phil Jackson mulling deals for young star Kristaps Porzingis has a beaten-down basketball city in a panic​

By
Jason Gay
June 22, 2017 9:49 a.m. ET
16 COMMENTS
If you see any Knicks fan today, give them a hug.

Hold them close. Whisper softly that it’s going to be OK—even if you know it might not be OK. The Knicks may never be OK.

Negativity isn’t what Knicks fans need to hear right now. Negativity, they live with, every day.

Today, they need love. And hugs.

There’s panic in the streets of this city, as the NBA Draft approaches Thursday night, and the local basketball club has once again taken this town’s loyal heart and punted it down 7th Avenue.

The Knicks are said to be exploring options to trade its best young player in a generation, the Latvian big man Kristaps Porzingis.

For a team that holds several copyrights on inexplicable decisions, moving Porzingis would probably be the most baffling stunt in team history. Over the past two seasons, Porzingis has been New York’s skinny, 7-foot-3 beacon of hope—the only intriguing part of a poorly-assembled, underperforming club.

Now the Knicks are said to be open to dealing him. On Wednesday night, Yahoo ’s Cronkite of NBA wheeling-dealing, Adrian Wojnarowski, said the team has “made calls” concerning moves in which Porzingis could be dealt for a package that would include a “Top-4” draft pick. The team is said to be excited over Kansas phenom Josh Jackson.

In the annals of disastrous Knicks trades, this could be the piece de resistance. Porzingis is only 21, and has shown flashes of brilliance both offensively and defensively, and is well-suited to the NBA’s current inside-outside 3-point-shooting style of play. He’s also shown a preternatural gift for being able to disarm both the media and a demanding city, and has basically been delightful.

But Porzingis skipped an end-of-season exit meeting with team officials, reportedly frustrated with the club’s direction, and it’s created a chill between the Knicks and their young star.

The Knicks, of course, are a cathedral of bad feelings, a vibe largely attributed to team owner James Dolan, whose behind-the-scenes maneuvering has provoked a variety of strange and unceremonious exits. But Porzingisgate appears to be the doing of team president Phil Jackson, a man who entered the organization with the reputation of a Zen master and fixer—and instead has caused more daily anxiety than the city’s misbegotten subway system.

Jackson confirmed his chagrin over Porzingis’s exit-meeting snub during an interview Wednesday with team-owned TV station MSG. He said the unexcused absence led to league speculation about Porzingis’s relationship with the club—and provoked inquiries about his trade status.

Jackson sounded open to considering it.

“As much as we love this guy,” Jackson said, “we have to do what’s good for our club.”

At that point, a Knicks fan could not have been blamed if they’d pried their television off the wall and thrown it in the East River.

It’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which the Knicks wind up getting equal or superior value for Porzingis. Porzingis is exactly what teams pray a draft pick will become—a young talent who quickly shows an ability to play at a high NBA level, with both the skills and the intangibles to handle the pro game. He is, without a doubt, the greatest achievement of Jackson’s short run as Knicks president, a player whose selection was initially mocked, and is now hailed as one of the great picks in recent years. To abandon him for the unknown—even really good unknown—feels like a toxic, ego-soaked failure. If he does stay, there’s a thick and utterly unnecessary cloud of ugliness to work through.

Knicks fans expect this. A once-proud franchise is now a routine dispenser of the soul-crush. It’s as if the team has been built for the sole purpose of emotionally torturing the people who love it the most.

On MSG, Jackson was asked what he’d say to fans who were “uneasy” with what was going on.

“I think we know what we’re doing,” Jackson said.

I can’t say this more emphatically: if you see a Knicks fan today, give them a hug. It may be all they get for a while.

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com​