'KP Sucks!' 'A-Hole!' 'Traitor!' Mavs Porzingis Endures Night in New York
Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle surely hoped he had a handle on what to expect from enraged Knicks fans upon Kristaps Porzingis' Thursday return to New York. “I’ve been coming here a long time,'' Rick said. "Nothing surprises me in here. It was what it was. We knew it was going to be a difficult atmosphere regardless of what the exact response was.”
"Difficult'' is fair. To use more harsh words would be fair, too.
Porzingis worked his way out of New York last year, landing in Dallas via trade. On this Mavs visit to Madison Square Garden, some audience venom was expected. But this was ... vicious.
It started at the start ...
It continued throughout ...
Somebody called KP a "traitor.'' A lot of people called him an "a---hole.''
"I don't know if their reaction is fair or not,'' Porzingis said. "It's what they know, it's what they've heard. It is what it is.''
What it also is is another Mavs loss, this one by the score of 106-103 (see game story here), dropping them to 6-5 - with two of the defeats coming at the hands of the woeful Knicks. It's been suggested that Porzingis was "rattled'' by the abuse but in fact, he finished with a double-double: 20 points and 11 rebounds, with three blocks.
Truthfully, even the Knicks themselves were a bit stunned by their own audience.
“I get it around this league,” said Marcus Morris, “but it was a different level.”
