Plenty of eyes are on Kristaps Porzingis in EuroBasket on the heels of a disappointing postseason performance in Boston due to health concerns. The seven-footer struggled in Latvia’s opener against Turkey last week, but the former Celtics center bounced back in a big way in his past two games overseas.
The big man had a team-high 26 points for Latvia in a win over Estonia on Friday before nearly helping Latvia pull off an upset against tournament favorite Serbia in a 84-80 loss on Saturday. Porzingis finished with 14 points and six rebounds in that defeat but there are several encouraging parts of the center’s game that appear to be returning to form. He played a team-high 33 minutes on Saturday despite playing the second end of a back-to-back, a rarity for the injury prone big man in Boston over the past two seasons.
Additionally, Porzingis has been getting to the free throw line at will over the past two games, piling up 21 free throw attempts over the past two contests against some NBA-level competition, including perennial MVP candidate Nikola Jokic for Serbia.
The Celtics traded away Porzingis this offseason as part of a CBA-induced salary dump, moving him to the Atlanta Hawks as part of a three-team trade that brought Georges Niang to Boston. The Celtics already dumped Niang to the Utah Jazz in a separate move to cut salary but Porzingis is expected to play a prominent role for the Hawks this season as a backup big man, assuming he can stay on the floor. He’s making $30.7 million in the final year of his contract with Atlanta, a deal signed in Boston during the summer of 2023. However, Porzingis has failed to play above 60 games in a season more than once since 2016 due to health concerns.
Porzingis’ next EuroBasket game will be a matchup against one of his replacements in Boston as Neemias Queta and Portugal battle Latvia on Monday in a crucial game to determine whether either team will advance out of group play.
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