Porzingis won’t return soon, if at all, this season

Any chance of Kristaps Porzingis getting back on the court soon was thrown out with the latest update. Knicks team president Steve Mills announced Friday through the Garden’s handpicked media members that Porzingis will be out until at least February, and there remains no guarantee he’ll play at all this season.

The other New York tabloid had written ad nauseam that Porzingis could return by Christmas. But that was never the case. Instead, Porzingis will be out at least a year from when he underwent ACL surgery in February.

The Knicks are among the worst teams in the NBA and trending downward. By the time Porzingis is re-evaluated in February, the question may not be whether the Latvian is ready but why would it make any sense to play at all this season.

Coach David Fizdale wouldn’t touch that topic.

“I’ve never been in that situation, not as a player and I’ve never coached a star that had an ACL like that. So I don’t know. I don’t know what’s best,” Fizdale said. “I just know that him feeling 100 percent and confident with his legs is the most important thing.”

The Knicks have been vague and jumbled about all their Porzingis updates, and Friday was no different. They said an evaluation determined Porzingis’ knee is “healing well, and he has made good progress with rehabilitation.” But it’s now 10 months post-surgery and there was no explanation as to why Porzingis has not begun practicing.

Mills was all over the place when trying to describe the next step.

“He’s looking for us to say, ‘Yes, you can play,’ or ‘You can’t play.’ And we’re looking to him to sort of get a feel for, ‘How are you feeling, KP? How does this feel? How do the coaches think you’re feeling with these kind of movements?’” Mills said. “And then we’ll come to some conclusion as to, ‘Okay, this is what we’re comfortable doing.’”

Earlier this season, there was a mix-up over whether Porzingis had started sprinting. Fizdale said he hadn’t. Porzingis apparently had. It sparked a mini controversy because Porzingis clearly wasn’t happy about the perception he wasn’t working hard in his rehab.

The Knicks have, in the past, had an uncomfortable relationship with Porzingis, culminating in his skipped exit meeting in 2017. Despite his attempts to pretend like he was never a high-ranking official alongside Phil Jackson, Mills was the GM at the time.

Mills is now president of the franchise and made a decision not to give Porzingis a contract extension this season, meaning the power forward will be a restricted free agent after the season.

That was done in the name of creating cap space for a max free agent in the summer, when the Knicks will be chasing Kevin Durant. But what happens if Durant or another star free agent doesn’t see Porzingis get on the court this season?

Mills claimed it’s not a concern.

“The most important thing for us is to have Kristaps on the court when he feels comfortable being on the court and we feel comfortable that he should be out there,” Mills said. “That’s more important than any timetable this season, some point in the summer. The most important thing is that we know that we’ve got this guy in a place that he feels comfortable on the floor and we feel comfortable in his ability to be a part of what we’re doing long term. That’s more important than anything else we can lay out.”