Kristaps Porzingis arrived in New York as a 20-year-old from Latvia, possessing the ability to speak four languages and having been trained for this moment from the time he was a middle- schooler. He played only 186 games for the Knicks before it came to a sudden end Thursday, but he saw things in that time that no amount of schooling could have prepared him to face.
The second star behind Carmelo Anthony early in his career, he watched as Anthony and Phil Jackson engaged in an odd battle of the franchise faces, with team president Jackson trying to push Anthony out of town.