Kristaps Porzingis is ‘not Shawn Bradley,’ is eating 3 steaks a day to bulk up
Over the course of his illustrious coaching career, Phil Jackson’s approach to motivating and handling his players off the floor has drawn at least as much attention as his merits as a tactician and his devotion to the triangle offense. We’ve heard countless stories over the years about his implementation of mindfulness training and meditation techniques; about getting Shaq and Kobe to bone up on Neitzsche and Lao Tzu; about learning that the best way to coach Dennis Rodman was to allow his transgressions to pass “like a log floating down a river”; about spicing up film sessions to keep players interested and invested; and a million other methods that Jackson has used to wring maximum productivity out of his clubs en route to 11 NBA championships.
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Sometimes, though, the motivational magic doesn’t resemble judo — “The idea is not to wilt or act dishonorably in the face of overwhelming force, but to be savvy enough to use the enemy’s own power against him” — as much as it does negging and simple head-on challenges to do more. That sure seemed to be the case when Jackson told old pal Charley Rosen that rookie Kristaps Porzingis, the tall and talented Latvian prospect Jackson selected with the No. 4 pick in the 2015 NBA draft, “might almost be too tall for the game,” invoking 7-foot-6 Shawn Bradley — the second overall pick in the 1993 draft, who played a dozen years in the league but is (perhaps unfairly) remembered mostly as a posterization lightning rod — in the process.
Here’s how Phil put it to Rosen:
Jackson projects that Porzingis will add at least 10 pounds of muscle before his first season commences, yet concerns still linger over his prize draft pick. “Like Shawn Bradley, who was nevertheless a pretty good player, KP might almost be too tall for the game. What I mean is that his core strength might never be good enough, and that he might not be able to get low enough to get himself into prime defensive position to body power rebounders or drivers.”
One month after the publication of Jackson’s comments, the 20-year-old Porzingis offered a reply that indicates he A) gets what the Knicks’ president of basketball operations is trying to do and B) doesn’t mind it. From Ian Begley of ESPN New York:
“I guess that’s what Phil does, gets guys to work hard and [get fired] up. That fired me up. ‘I’m like, I’m not Shawn Bradley, you know,’” Porzingis said on Wednesday from a company here that is providing him with a custom mattress to fit his 7-foot-1 frame.
Porzingis admitted he wasn’t entirely sure what Jackson meant by the comparison but he’s well aware that Jackson has used his words to motivate players.
“He knows what he’s doing,” the rookie said. Porzingis didn’t seem offended or upset by Jackson’s comments — just motivated.
“I want to be better than Shawn Bradley, obviously, and be stronger than him, but I’m a different player,” he said.
That seems like exactly the appropriate response for the rookie — another step on the road toward demonstrating he can handle himself in both the NBA and the big bad New York media market, and that he’s capable of turning those draft-night boos into cheers before too long.
It’s a road Porzingis has traveled since the run-up to the draft, where he was cast by many as yet another lanky young European mystery man/bust-in-the-making, a role he refused to play in an interview with Yahoo Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski:
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“I don’t like being labeled soft,” Porzingis told Yahoo Sports. “I’m very hungry. I love the game. I’ve got to prove to coaches and GMs that I’m not soft just because I’m from Europe. They need to see that I’m not just some skinny white guy, that I’m going to be there fighting. They’ll need to see that I’m a worker who’s going to play hard, and play tough …
“There are guys who have had incredible NBA careers — like Dirk [Nowitzki] and the Gasols [Pau and Marc] — and there are guys who haven’t. They’ll say, this guy is a bust. He’ll be [Nikoloz] Tskitishvili, this Georgian guy. [Andrea] Bargnani, Darko [Milicic] … That’s why I am talking, because I want the fear to go away with me. I want people to get to know me. I don’t want to be the mystery man from Europe.
“Some fans — they don’t want a European on their team. People have opinions, but maybe they’ve never seen me play. There’s nothing I can say, only I can go out and prove myself.”
He began to do so at Las Vegas Summer League, acquitting himself well in matchups against other up-and-coming big men like 2015’s No. 3 pick, Jahlil Okafor of the Philadelphia 76ers. There’s an opportunity for Porzingis to fit comfortably into a big role on this Knicks team moving forward, but to do so, he’ll need to take the next step and address the reasonable content of Jackson’s headline-grabbing critique by hunkering down and packing on some pounds.
That, too, is in the works, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News:
Porzingis, who is roughly 7-2, has aggressively been trying to adapt his body to the NBA, consuming roughly 5,000 calories (including three steaks) per day in hopes of gaining 15 pounds. He’s four pounds short of his goal, and there’s an understanding that he’s built for power forward in the NBA, rather than banging in the paint with centers.
“For now, I’m a (power forward) for sure because of the defense. I’ve got to be able to hold those (centers). So that’s the main thing,” the 20-year-old said. “Once I get stronger, I’ll be able to play (center). Offensively, I can play both positions. At (center), I’ll be way quicker than the defender. So I’ll get stronger and gain more weight, if I want to play (center).”
All of this — Porzingis’ acclimation to the NBA game after playing for Sevilla of Spain’s ACB, his work to gain mass and strength, his adjustment to guarding different types of players in different spots on the floor at the NBA level, etc. — will take time. The Knicks are a team in transition, and Porzingis’ growth — both literally and figuratively — represents the most significant element of what Jackson, Derek Fisher and company hope will be a fruitful long-term metamorphosis.
In the short term, Knicks fans will have to content themselves with knowing that Jackson’s still working overtime to keep his charges on task, and that the hoped-for future of the franchise is listening more to what the Zen Master’s saying than to how he’s saying it, and calmly (and, evidently, hungrily) setting about the task of proving doubters wrong.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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