NEW YORK — Kristaps Porzingis gave the Celtics what he had in their season-ending Game 6 loss to the Knicks on Friday night. However, his production remained hampered yet again by an illness that has impacted him all offseason.
“Even right now, I played 11 minutes, but I’m cashed right now,” Porzingis said Friday night in the locker room.
Porzingis finished with four points and five rebounds off the bench in a 119-81 blowout loss, setting the stage for a summer of uncertainty for both Boston and Porzingis.
For now, the focus for the seven-footer remains on figuring out what is wrong with him, which is still a bit of a mystery.
“I’m not sure,” Porzingis said when asked about whether he knows more about his illness. “I mean, doctors are trying to help as much as possible. It was just some lingering fatigue, some effects.
“It was just extremely weird, and many symptoms that were kind of super weird. So I think nobody has a clear answer. I’ll see how I go from here. Maybe I do some extra testing and some extra stuff and see if we find something. If not, maybe just a reset. Reset for my whole system and that will give my energy levels hopefully back up.”
Porzingis had to miss portions of two games during Boston’s postseason run due to the illness but never considered shutting things down.
“No, when I got the approval from the doctors, they don’t believe anything serious can happen,” Porzingis said. “They tested my heart, everything. Then it was just a matter of me, how much I can give. And yeah. I tried to give what I had. It wasn’t much as you could see. But yeah, there was no bigger risk, so I was able to play.”
With a long offseason on a horizon for Porzingis the goal now is to rest, which will lead hopefully lead to recovery.
“I always try to downplay it in my own mind that ‘I’m good, I’m good,’ but I don’t know,” Porzingis said. “My system just is not perfect right now. It’s not working the way it should be. Many, many weird things.
“And it might be the best thing I need right now is just to rest, just get somewhere in the sun and just let my system kind of even itself up. But it definitely was a very, very frustrating time for me, and nothing much else to add, really. It’s going to be now for me at least some time to recover from this.”
Porzingis has one year remaining on his deal and hopes he will have an opportunity to bounce back in Boston.
“The main thing for me now is just to let my system get into a normal state,” Porzingis said. “Get my energy back up and then I’ll start to look into some things maybe outside of basketball at first, and then the European Championships later in the summer, so I’m excited about that.
“So this summer I expect a nice bounceback for myself and then heading into the next season.”