Sorry, Dallas Mavericks fans -- Kristaps Porzingis probably will not play for the team this season. The day after the Mavericks pulled off a blockbuster trade that saw them acquire the All-Star big man along with Courtney Lee, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Trey Burke in exchange for Wesley Matthews, Dennis Smith Jr., DeAndre Jordan and future draft picks, team owner Mark Cuban has spoken. According to Cuban, Porzingis likely will not play for the team during the 2018-19 season as he continues to recover from a torn ACL in his left knee from a year ago. This has to be disappointing for Mavericks fans as I'm sure they wanted to see the European pairing of Rookie of the Year favorite Luka Doncic and Porzingis. Heck, when you add Dirk Nowitzki to the mix, it's a European basketball fan's dream to see three of the best players from the continent suit up on the Mavs at the same time. However, it looks like fans will have to wait until next season to see the Doncic-Porzingis pairing. One thing that's worth noting is it's not even a guarantee that Porzingis is a member of the Mavericks during the 2019-20 season as he plans to sign his qualifying offer in restricted free agency, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic. If it makes Mavs fans feel better, the organization is confident that they'll re-sign the 23-year-old, as Charania states. "Porzingis is incredibly fond of Dirk Nowitzki and Luka Doncic -- and the Mavericks have confidence they will be able to keep Porzingis, league sources said. Knicks/Mavericks talks started picking up steam Wednesday night." Considering he's coming off of a major injury and has the opportunity to form the greatest European duo in NBA history with a 19-year-old Doncic, I have a hard time believing Porzingis would walk away from Dallas. But one thing appears to be clear -- the Mavericks will rest Porzingis and allow him to fully recover from his torn ACL for the remainder of the season.<doc-sep>Kristaps Porzingis was spotted for the first time since the Knicks traded him on Thursday afternoon. The Post photographed the Latvian forward on Friday coming out of a spa in Hastings-on-Hudson with a grin on his face. “I dunno man. I dunno,” Porzingis told The Post when asked if he would play this season, as his rehab continues from a torn ACL. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told ESPN that Porzingis is unlikely to suit up this season. Porzingis smiled a little when asked if he is looking forward to playing with fellow Euro stud Luka Doncic on the Mavericks. Porzingis met with Knicks management on Thursday to express his concern with the losing culture of the 10-40 team. An hour later, he was shipped to Dallas. “This was his last session here. We’re going to miss him a lot now that he’s moving to Dallas,” Naomi Ortiz, the owner of the spa, Nlighten, told The Post.<doc-sep>Photo : Roland Martinez ( Getty ) The Knicks were never the right team for Kristaps Porzingis. He’s not quite their type. The youngster deviated from the blue-and-orange standard in far too many deal-breaking respects. Advertisement He was a homegrown prodigy—not some mid-career lug washing ashore via catastrophic trade. Sniping threes, throwing down dunks, safeguarding the rim, performing feats recognizable as forward-thinking basketball—none of that really aligns with the “Dolanball” ethos. Well-liked with a corny charm—not surly and alienating. Deeply invested in the actual outcomes of the games and disillusioned by the dysfunction—not halfway to 1OAK by the third quarter. Sincere and ambitious and trying desperately to make his suspect frame stronger—not soft and broken-down and dissolute on arrival. Tearing his ACL as a Knick—not joining this circus after the ACL tear. And, of course, ready to enter his second contract—that’s an automatic no-go. That’s not the Knicks way, hasn’t been for years. At that juncture, the Knicks just had to use this generational talent as a sweetener for all the bad money they’d taken on. Bad money, of course, is more Knicks than Kristaps Porzingis ever was. Now both of them are gone, leaving just a salary cap chasm in their place. Bad money will return, though, and eventually get its jersey hung from the rafters in the Garden. Kristaps won’t. So yes, the Knicks can bring back the unhappy, undersized point guard with a crazy vert, no jumper, and no defense—the one they already passed on in the draft, just to make it a little Knicksier. Let him inherit the mantle of Steve Francis. Let him accelerate through the cycle of a New York point guard at an unprecedented rate, all five stages of grief in the blink of an eye. They’ll use that bushel of future picks to select new promise and then find innovative ways to alienate them. And yes, of course, they’ll go on the hunt this offseason, and either bring back some permutation of temperamental superstar weirdos eager to begin their MSG declines, or settle for the B-list quasi-stars they were always going to end up with. Just know that they had the real thing right in front of them, only he wasn’t a good fit. He’s much too large to fit inside a trash can.<doc-sep>Mary Altaffer/Associated Press Before a game between the Dallas Mavericks and New York Knicks in December 2015 during Kristaps Porzingis' rookie year, the New York media was ravenous for the opinion of Mavs owner Mark Cuban on the future of the Knicks' rookie "unicorn." Would Porzingis be the second coming of Dirk Nowitzki? At the time, it seemed like a stretch. Nowitzki, after all, had been doing this for nearly two decades. He'd won an NBA championship (at the expense of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, of all people, in 2011). Porzingis was still an unknown, a project. Cuban didn't have a crystal ball, but he made it crystal clear that if he had been Phil Jackson on draft night in 2015, he would've done the same thing with the fourth overall pick. "I love Kristaps," Cuban said that night, a night on which Nowitzki, then 37, had led the Mavs to a 104-97 victory over the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. "It's funny, because everywhere I went [after the draft] and dealt with New York basketball fans, they were like, 'Oh, man.' And I was like, 'No, you don't understand. We would've traded up in a heartbeat to get that kid.' We loved him." Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press Video Play Button Videos you might like A little more than three years later, they got him. The Mavs closed the deal Thursday on a blockbuster trade to acquire Porzingis for the expiring contracts of DeAndre Jordan and Wesley Matthews, Dennis Smith Jr. and two future first-round picks. The Mavs also took on Trey Burke and the hard-to-move contracts of Tim Hardaway Jr. and Courtney Lee. More than 20 years after making a bold, draft-day trade to acquire an obscure European player (Nowitzki), the Mavs are trying to repeat history. They did the same in acquiring Luka Doncic, the third pick in the 2018 draft, from the Hawks and then spinning some expiring contracts and the talented but troublesome Smith Jr. into Porzingis, whom the organization has long viewed as the second coming of Nowitzki. Long ago, it was the Mavs who partnered Nowitzki with Steve Nash and Michael Finley. Now, it's pretty much the same Mavs hierarchy making a move to pair up Doncic and Porzingis with the potential for a max free agent and/or other complementary pieces this summer. It's one of the benefits of having a like-minded team of decision-makers in place for more than a couple of years, which is more than the Knicks can ever say. In jettisoning Porzingis and acquiring Smith Jr.—whom the Knicks could have selected in the 2017 draft instead of Frank Ntilikina—the MSG gulag wiped the slate clean of the ill-fated Jackson era. Although it's not clear whether this particular era of Knicks history would've been any different had Jackson, the most championship-decorated coach in NBA history, never appeared on the scene at all. In recent weeks, the Mavs had been engaged with the Knicks on several trade scenarios, all of which involved Smith Jr. and Hardaway Jr., and some of which potentially involved a third team, according to multiple people involved in the discussions. The Mavs waited patiently and then hit the jackpot Thursday when Porzingis and his representatives met with the Knicks, expressed disillusionment with the franchise's direction and requested a trade, one of the people said. Porzingis was not aware of the Mavs' intense interest in acquiring him when he made his trade request, one of the people familiar with the discussions said. But from there, it came together quickly. It's not surprising considering the Knicks' longstanding fascination with selling hope (TWO MAX FREE AGENTS!) over success (four playoff appearances in 17 years). It's also not surprising when you consider the Mavs' longstanding fascination with Porzingis and how Dallas has long embraced the European market for talent. Mavs coach Rick Carlisle—who, unlike any Knicks coach since Red Holzman, can say he's been on the job for more than a decade—spoke about Porzingis' potential that same night at Madison Square Garden in 2015. "Dirk's a game-changer, the same way Reggie Miller was a game-changer when he was on the floor," Carlisle said. "There was always somebody next to him—26, 28 feet from the basket. Same thing with Dirk. He has great impact. Porzingis is going to be one of those guys that's going to have an opportunity to have the same kind of all-around impact on the game." Seth Wenig/Associated Press Yes, one outcome of this trade is that the Knicks will have nearly $75 million of cap room this summer, which, in theory, could be used to attract not one, but two max-level free agents. The class is deep, so the room for error is smaller. Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, Klay Thompson...how could you go wrong if you're the Knicks? But of the two teams involved in this blockbuster trade, only one seems to have learned from the errors of the past. During Nowitzki's career, the Mavs have tried to play the max free-agent game (with Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony, among others) and failed. The Knicks have tried, too (striking out on James, Wade, Bosh and others), and they've wound up with only Amar'e Stoudemire and, via an ill-conceived trade, Anthony. If there's a player on the market who you want (in the Mavs' case, Porzingis), the easiest way to acquire him is through trade. Is there risk from the Mavs' standpoint? Of course. The Knicks may well score big in 2019 free agency, and for them to make a move like this, they better have some assurances. But personally, I like the Mavs' chances of putting less-than-big-ticket pieces around Doncic and Porzingis (such as, for example, Walker, Khris Middleton, DeMarcus Cousins, Nikola Mirotic, Al Horford or Nikola Vucevic.) As far as Porzingis and Doncic as a tandem, one Western Conference executive described them to Bleacher Report on Thursday as "lethal." "Very much so," another Western Conference executive said. Don't discount the possibility that star free agents, who will be deciding where to sign this summer, will share the same view.<doc-sep>
Kristaps Porzingis will probably not play for the Dallas Mavericks this season as he continues to recover from a torn ACL in his left knee suffered a year ago, owner Mark Cuban told ESPN. The Mavs acquired Porzingis as the centerpiece of a blockbuster trade with the New York Knicks on Thursday, believing that the 23-year-old power forward/center who was an All-Star last season can form an elite duo with 19-year-old rookie star Luka Doncic for years to come. Porzingis, who indicated to Knicks management Thursday morning that he wanted to be traded, will be a restricted free agent this summer. The Mavs made the trade with the plan of signing the 7-foot-3 Porzingis to a long-term deal this offseason. Sources said the organization is confident Doncic and likely-to-retire legend Dirk Nowitzki, one of Porzingis' idols, can help sell him on staying in Dallas. "He loves Luka and Dirk," one source said of Porzingis, whose other option would be to play next season on a qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent in 2020, an unprecedented move for a player of his caliber that would cost him millions of dollars. The qualifying offer is $4.5 million, while the Mavs can offer a maximum contract worth $158 million over five years. Dallas sent second-year point guard Dennis Smith Jr., wing Wesley Matthews Jr., center DeAndre Jordan and two future first-round picks to New York for Porzingis, shooting guard Tim Hardaway Jr., wing Courtney Lee and point guard Trey Burke. The trade opened up enough salary-cap space for the Knicks to pursue two maximum-salary free agents this summer. Hardaway and Lee are owed a combined $31 million next season, while Matthews and Jordan have expiring contracts. The Mavs deemed Porzingis' potential to be worth the price, considering him a franchise-caliber player whose game complements Doncic's. Porzingis, the No. 4 overall pick in the 2015 draft, was an All-Star last season, when he averaged a career-best 22.7 points as well as 6.6 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game before injuring his knee. "We obviously think Porzingis is a great young talent, similar in many ways to Dirk," coach Rick Carlisle said Thursday on the Mavs' flagship station, 103.3 FM ESPN. "This is kind of a Dirk-and-[Steve] Nash type of situation, only these guys are taller." Porzingis was evaluated in January by the Knicks' medical staff, which confirmed his knee is healing well. He recently worked out with a coach on the court for roughly 45 minutes. The workout included Porzingis shooting pull-up 3-pointers and dunking. Porzingis will have an introductory news conference in Dallas on Monday.