Kevin Knox looked like he could have been warming up for his next game. One after another, the shots from deep dropped through the net.
When the 6-foot-9 forward moved, he showed almost no hint of the ankle injury that has kept him sidelined for more than half of the first seven games of his rookie season.
Knox is supremely confident his return will come soon, even if he doesn’t yet know exactly when that will be. For now, the Knicks rookie patiently waits until he is certain he is at full strength.
The 19-year-old is comfortable taking his time. There is so much of it ahead.
“I’m a lot better,” Knox said following Tuesday’s practice. “I’m getting there. I’m pretty close to getting back. But as of right now I really have no timetable.
“[There’s] no rushing at all. I’m young. Of course I’m going to heal faster than most older guys, but we just make sure that when I come back I’m at least 100 to 110 percent. We’re not rushing anything. Once I don’t feel pain at all, that’s probably the time I’m going to come back. I mean, 82 games, a lot of years to play, I don’t want to risk nothing else.”
Knox will sit out his fifth straight game Wednesday night against the Pacers, but will travel with the team on the road trip to Dallas and Washington. Knox is currently participating in shooting drills and doing non-contact court activity while increasing his movement on a daily basis.
Despite being sidelined since suffering the left-ankle injury on Oct. 20, Knox believes his learning curve hasn’t slowed, and said he has picked up new things from the bench.
“I really enjoy watching on the side because I can really see the game from a different perspective,” said Knox, who was speaking to the media for the first time since the injury occurred. “It’s really fun to watch on the side, they talk, the way they move the ball, defensively. These past few games I was on the bench watching it was pretty great. I got to talk to players on the bench, tell them what they can do better, more and more leadership I can bring to the team.”
Though Knox said it was the “worst injury” he’s had since high school, he said he wasn’t initially worried about the severity of it when he collided with Boston’s Terry Rozier in the third game of his young career.
“You see a lot of NBA athletes twist their ankle, roll their ankle all the time, so at the moment it was painful and I was kind of mad and frustrated,” Knox said.
What’s made it more frustrating is that Knox had bounced back from a rough preseason, and a 4-of-16 shooting performance in his career-opener, to score 17 points on 7-of-14 shooting against the Nets in the season’s second game. The next day — four minutes into the next game — Knox went down.
“He’s itching [to get back],” coach David Fizdale said.
But Knox can wait. This season, there is no rush.
“[I’m] just getting a lot of work in, being at practices, making sure I get better every single day,” Knox said. “We got 82 games. We want to make sure I come back healthy. … 82 games is a lot of time to recover, get back, play some more.”