By the end, his constituents were weighing in with voice boxes instead of ballot boxes, casting their votes for a favorite son in whom they have invested so much. As the dying seconds of this 116-110 Knicks victory over the Nuggets bled away, all 19,812 of them began the roar in earnest.
M! V! P!
M! V! P!
M! V! P!
Did Kristaps Porzingis hear them?
“Nope,” he said, with a smile that contradicted that at once, a smile that reflected a career-high 38 points and the first of, presumably, many, many times when he will take command of the heart of a game at Madison Square Garden and call it his own.
His teammates heard the chants. And while intellectually they know — as did the folks doing the chanting — that it’s a laughably premature sentiment, they also know who their meal ticket is.
“He should be an MVP,” said center Enes Kanter, who himself is becoming quite a Garden favorite, who teamed with Kyle O’Quinn to give the Knicks 27 points and 21 rebounds from the center position. “I’m just throwing it out there.”
Said Courtney Lee: “He’s getting stronger and starting to understand where his spots on the floor are. Then it’s on us getting him the ball in the right place.”
One memorable trip, near the end of the third quarter, the right place seemed like it was going to be up in the rafters, near where Clyde Frazier’s jersey hangs.
“I thought I threw it too high,” he said. “Then I remembered who I was throwing it to.”
Porzingis flushed it. The Garden exploded.
This is now five 30-point games in six for Porzingis, who has so far taken to the part of franchise cornerstone as easily as most of us change shirts. If we were expecting a learning curve after he assumed the baton from Carmelo Anthony … well, that is probably still coming.
For now, though, it’s the most fun ride in New York sports, now that Aaron Judge has taken a hiatus from clobbering baseballs to Kingdom Come. Noah Syndergaard was sitting courtside Monday night; he has heard what New York sounds like when it falls head over heels for a kid with talent. Monday’s relentless thunder had to sound awfully familiar to him.
And here’s the thing, too: Because Porzingis is still young, because he is homegrown, because the Garden faithful have been able to watch him grow from Day 1, there is a patience factor now that wasn’t here the past few years when it was Anthony serving as the alpha dog. Oh, when Melo was feeling it and scoring in binges, he could make the place roar.
But think about the third quarter Porzingis endured. The Knicks led by 23 points with a minute-and-a-half gone; in just six minutes, they squandered every point, and actually fell behind by a deuce. And Porzingis looked, for those six minutes, like the worst player in the NBA. He couldn’t catch the ball. He couldn’t hold it. It was amazing to watch.
But also amazing to listen to: The Garden wasn’t happy with what it was seeing, of course, but it wasn’t focusing all of its fury on the star player having a hell of a time avoiding banana peels. The people waited. They bided their time. And soon enough, Porzingis paid them in full for their persistence.
“We don’t want to make a habit of that,” coach Jeff Hornacek said of the Knicks’ third-quarter follies.
But in a way, that third quarter — for the Knicks and for Porzingis — was a perfect microcosm of what this season already has been six games in, and what it’s bound to be for the next 76. The Knicks barely needed an airplane to take them home from Cleveland, where on Sunday they had kneecapped the three-time Eastern Conference champion Cavaliers.
If you are a Knicks fan, those are the games you seek, the flecks of light in the darkness, to prove to yourself the hassle is worth it. And then, on top of that, you get a game like this, and a half like this — 65-43 up at the break — and, yes, the 27-2 run that nearly ruined everything. You get that, and you get Porzingis, the ups and the downs and his shocking, almost hilarious plus/minus number — zero.
“We can learn from this game,” Porzingis said, and so can the folks who will be watching all year. The good, the bad, the ugly, all of it a tangle of fascinating basketball. It may not be a title chase. But it’s better than what’s been. That’s a start.