Kristaps Porzingis progressing in his rehab, will be reevaluated in February

Remember Kristaps Porzingis? He was tall, Latvian, and quite good at the sport they call “basketball.” I miss him.

The Knicks apparently miss him as well, because they authored an official press release Friday, updating Porzingis’s rehab from the torn ACL he suffered last season.

God, was it really only February 6 that Kristaps was lost to that horrific knee injury? It seems like a lifetime ago. By my unofficial count, the Knicks have lost 3,000 games since then.

Team president Steve Mills also updated the media on Kristaps’ health in a meeting with reporters (with the notable exception of The Daily News’ Stefan Bondy). Mills reiterated that the franchise’s centerpiece won’t be tested again until the middle of February, describing his rehab as “fluid.” Per Marc Berman:

“There will be a series of benchmarks that we’ll still measure as we’re going through this,” Mills said. “But then we’ll have another in mid-February. We feel like we’ll have enough data and enough information to make another assessment to see exactly where he is.”

Asked directly if there’s a chance he can still play his first game in February, Mills said: “I don’t know. I won’t know until after we do these next round of testing. I’m saying we won’t know when he will play until we do the next set of testing, which is in mid-February.”

So...February it is. I’m going to go out on a limb and say there is little chance Kristaps sees playing time by the end of that month, even if the tests show him to be in perfect health. The Knicks will have 20 games left by the beginning of March, and it’s not like they’ll be in the playoff hunt; quite the opposite, actually — those games should have serious tanking implications. But it would be nice to have our man back out there, getting some valuable reps alongside young guns like Kevin Knox and...maybe Emmanuel Mudiay?

At the very least, Kristaps needs something to occupy his time, so he stops reading books by Kobe Bryant.