The Dallas Mavericks’ decision to trade Kristaps Porzingis to the Washington Wizards caught many by surprise.
Even Luka Doncic didn’t see the move coming.
That said, both sides desperately needed a change.
Dallas wanted to move on, and Porzingis welcomed the opportunity to prove himself as something more than the injury prone enigma he had come to be known as over the past few years.
This week, in a conversation with Ava Wallace of The Washington Post, Porzingis confronted his reputation for being injury prone head on.
“Of course, my body is particular, I’m 7-foot-3 — you know the way I move,” he said. “But the injuries that I’ve had have been contact injuries, the two major ones — the ACL and the meniscus. So that’s something you can’t really avoid. It can happen, and it happened to me. I haven’t had the best luck in that sense.”
That being said, Porzingis also doesn’t want to make excuses. He knows he has to string together successive seasons of lasting success in order to truly live up to his potential.
“Anybody can have one great season, and it’s like, ‘Oh, okay, whatever.’ But something that you build with a foundation — ‘We’re playing this way; we’re being consistent; this is how we see everything’ — keep building. And then you make the little adjustments by having open communication, by letting the other guy know what you both need — poof,” Porzingis said, while putting his hands together. “Little bit like a relationship.”
The Wizards appear to be a nice fit for Porzingis. He likes the area and so does his girlfriend. They seem to be having a lot of fun there. He also seems to be happy about his teammates.
That’s a welcome departure from how things ended between him and his Mavericks teammates.
— Game 7 (@game7__) April 1, 2022
Porzingis is a special talent. Will he one day be able to achieve what many envisioned for him during his peak days with the Knicks?
Time will tell.
Related: 76ers Players Are Turning On Coach Doc Rivers
Jennifer Withers Hoey is a former Business Development Manager who transitioned to writing about sports. With valuable connections all over the West Coast, she has used those contacts to break some of the most interesting stories pertaining to the Portland Trail Blazers, Oregon Ducks, LA Lakers, LA Clippers, Seattle Supersonics (RIP), and more.
