The roar was barely out of 19,812 mouths, a dot of delight in a darkening landscape. Kristaps Porzingis had just delivered a genuine poster-ization of Giannis Antetokounmpo (who had one of his own later on), dunking over the Greek Freak. Man, did Madison Square Garden want to let loose there.
And in an instant, in an eye blink: silence.
Awful, grisly silence.
“It’s deflating,” Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said, and that was before he knew of the awful diagnosis to come. “Very deflating.”
Porzingis was on the floor. He was pounding his fist when he wasn’t grabbing for his left knee. Earlier in the season, on the other end of the floor, Porzingis had nearly bent his ankle in half against the Heat, thrown a shivering scare into the Garden, missed a few games, admitted how scary it is to have your body betray you like that.
This was different. This wasn’t the ankle. This was the knee, twisting in a way it wasn’t intended to twist. The replay went up on the Garden board and the gasp was immediate and it was unambiguous. He struggled to his feet, hobbled off the floor.
Soon, he flashed a thumbs up as he walked out of the Garden, his leg wrapped in a knee stabilizer, bound for an MRI tube that would deliver the devastating news: torn anterior cruciate ligament. Out for the year. And who knows how much more after that.
So much of the Knicks limping off with him.
“He’s part of what we’re trying to build around,” Hornacek said. “Other guys are going to have to step up and do it in different ways.”
In that moment, there were no other guys. In that moment, the Garden felt the way Citi Field had felt on the afternoon of Aug. 24, when Michael Conforto had taken one of his textbook-beautiful lefty swings and wound up crumpling in agony, his shoulder capsule torn. Conforto had been the last reason to watch a lost Mets season; Porzingis was the only reason to watch these Knicks, especially as they crawl through another year clear of the playoffs.
Here was the real pity, too: Porzingis had started the game brilliantly, hitting four of his first five shots, blocking three shots, thoroughly engaged in what promised to be a showcase game against the Bucks’ splendid young stars, Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker.
The Garden faithful seem to understand the Knicks aren’t going anywhere even if the team itself refuses to give up that particular ghost, but they were engaged, too. And when Porzingis slammed it home over Antetokounmpo …
Man, they had wanted to let loose.
Instead, they wanted to lose their lunch.
And in that moment, it seemed a brutal reckoning that the honeymoon between Porzingis and Knicks fans had recently begun to falter. Lately the Garden hadn’t swooned over every little thing he does well, as it had for 2½ years, and it no longer silently looked the other way when he played poorly. He wasn’t getting the Melo treatment. But he was starting to hear the audible demand of expectation.
This night felt like a hearkening to a halcyon time. And then he threw down that dunk. There were 8 minutes and 40 seconds left in the second quarter. Inside the Garden, it felt like last call.
They knew.
Even before they knew.
Before the game, Hornacek had agreed it’s sometimes hard to reconcile that Porzingis is still only 22 years old, that in the modern NBA, it’s often impossible to reconcile a birth certificate with a franchise tag.
“We do take a lot of things for granted with younger players today,” Hornacek said. “Back when I was playing, most of us played four years in college and we were 22, 23 years old before we ever played our first game. When you’re 22, you’re still figuring a lot of things out, and not just basketball. As you get older, certain things come easier.”
At 22 years and 188 days old — Porzingis’ exact age Tuesday — Patrick Ewing played a fine game on Feb. 9, 1985, scoring nine points and blocking 10 shots … for Georgetown against Boston College. At 22 years and 188 days old, Steph Curry was about to embark on a third NBA season that would be his most frustrating yet, ankle woes limiting him to 24 games.
They got better as they got older. The plan was that Porzingis would follow a similar path. He still can. Players recover from ACL tears.
But a season that was already lost suddenly felt even worse, shrouded in awful, grisly silence.