SORE POINT
Ailing knee already sidelines KP, but Hornacek not worried
Many NBA personnel men believe Kristaps Porzingis’ durability will be the only thing separating him from greatness.
So far, the jury is out in that department. Porzingis, who played a lot of basketball during the European championships this summer, left the third day of Knicks practice early Thursday with a sore right knee. He was not made available to the media.
Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said the 7-foot-3 Latvian could be back for practice Friday.
“We’re establishing a good thing here,’’ Hornacek said. “We want to keep that momentum. Obviously he’s a big part of it.
“I can’t tell you [if it’s an old injury]. I don’t know,” Hornacek said. “All they told me was it was a knee. I think his knee just got a little sore there, so we wanted to stop him from running at that point.”
Accordingg to sources, former Knicks president Phil Jackson was willing to hear offers for Porzingis around the draft for two reasons.
The first is Porzingis is a free agent in 2019 and the Zen Master sensed he would bolt considering his frustration that prompted him to blow off their exit meeting last spring. The second is Porzingis’ body had shown he is prone to various ailments. Jackson’s handling of the exit-meeting blowoff eventually got him fired.
Porzingis missed 26 games in his first two seasons with various ailments, including Achilles tendinitis, considered a big man’s ailment. Porzingis, 22, also missed a handful of exhibition games for Latvia before the European cham- pionships began because of a knee bruise.
Porzingis reported to training camp for Latvia in late July and played into mid-September, with Latvia making the quarterfinals. Porzingis averaged 23 points in seven contests.
Hornacek doesn’t think the event and its preparation has worn anyone down. Willy Hernangomez (Spain) and Mindaugas Kuzminskas (Lithuania) also played in the tournament.
“KP was pretty good [in that] he didn’t practice every day,’’ Hornacek said. “All the friendly games he didn’t play all of those. [The coaches] helped us out with that. They didn’t kill him out there. It was a good balance. Guys got experience, got in good shape and so far look good.’’
A disillusioned Porzingis skipped his exit meeting after last season so he didn’t go over the offseason plan with Hornacek and brass and get final approval to play in the Euros.
“I didn’t have a problem with it,” Hornacek said. “That’s experience. I think it was a great step for him to be the leader of that team, and experience that, and have some success and get the accolades that he did for the Euro basket. That’s fine. The only adjustment for us was to try and monitor him.”
Hornacek had said he might fly to Europe to watch Porzingis, but never made it. The Knicks sent a trove of their front-office types and scouts instead.
“The schedule didn’t match up; we had a lot going on here,’’ Hornacek said.
Hornacek said Porzingis, who played 66 games last season, will benefit from the less-congested schedule that reduced back-to-backs.
Last December, with Porzingis averaging 35 minutes per game, an NBA scout with European ties told The Post he was playing too much for a 21-year-old. One week later he was struck with the Achilles issues.
“The way the NBA has now scheduled games, I think they’ve made it so you’re not having to decide if you have to rest a guy or not,” Hornacek said. “So there’s going to be plenty of every-other-day games and it’s on us to figure out if the guys are getting worn out. Sometimes if they’re too tired that’s when they might get injured. Some of that’s with age. Some of that’s with his size. But he’s worked hard this summer to get bigger and stronger and to be able to battle through that, and he wants to try and do that. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that he plays as many as possible.”