The Kristaps plan
KP excited about Fiz’s new Knick strategy
LAS VEGAS – Kristaps Porzingis has been consistent about his preference to play power forward over center, stating it plays to his strengths in that he can shoot over smaller opponents and doesn’t have to deal with banging against large bodies on defense.
David Fizdale arrived with a different philosophy. It’s not necessarily contrasting Porzingis’ preference, just more open to expansion. And apparently the Latvian has approved.
“In our conversations I just told him, ‘I don’t have a position for you. Are you cool with that?’” Fizdale said. “He’s like, ‘Absolutely.’ He doesn’t want to be put in a box. I’m not going to put him in a position to fail. I’m not going to throw him in a situation where he’s going against some brute out there at center and get beat to death. At the same time our league doesn’t really have a lot of those type of guys anymore. He gives me a lot of flexibility to move him to power forward, to center and even some small forward.”
Fizdale plans to fly to Latvia following Summer League and meet Porzingis for the first time. It’s a family trip (Fizdale is bringing his wife and wants to spend time with the Porzingises) but also an opportunity to teach. The coach already conceived of the film he’d like to pore over with Porzingis.
“He’s going to get tired of me by two of those days over there,” Fizdale said. “I have so many things I’ve broken down and pulled – just stuff Jeff (Hornacek) was already doing from the year before, stuff that was similar, so I can show them, hey, ‘I’m going to use you this way or use you that way.’
“At least I’ll have visual examples. And then I have some clips of guys who played for me and situations I like to play out of and I can use those guys as examples as well.”
It’s no secret Fizdale wants to spread the floor, freeing the paint for drives and kick-outs. He was part of the coaching staff in Miami that transformed Chris Bosh from a power forward in the post to a center on the perimeter. In Memphis, he encouraged Marc Gasol to launch more 3-pointers in one season than his previous eight combined.
Porzingis, if not for the concerns about his durability, would be the perfect mold for that style.
“Anthony Davis, you name him, he’s that,” Fizdale said about Porzingis at center. “It’s that dynamic guy who can outrun everybody but you can’t put a small defender on him. You put somebody too big on him he can pull him away from the rim. Defensively, he can guard everybody. It really is a luxury for me to have a guy that I can move around at different positions.”
From his opening press conference, Fizdale made clear his priority was building a relationship with Porzingis and, in the process, dispelling the notion that he doesn’t mesh with European players. According to sources, Fizdale talked about those concerns – and about his fallout with Gasol – during a conversation in May with Porzingis’ brother, Janis.
Fizdale since helped recruit another European player to the Knicks – Mario Hezonja of Croatia. The idea that Porzingis will miss most of next season, if not all of it because of the ACL surgery, hasn’t sapped Fizdale’s enthusiasm about his best player.
“I can’t lock him into nothing. I just see a lot of places I can use him to be dynamic for us,” he said.