Kristaps Porzingis ($5,000) has been dealing with a non-COVID illness. As a result, he only played 13 and 14 minutes in the first two games of the series. In Game 3, he played 19 minutes and on Monday, Porzingis received 24 minutes. He only shot 2-of-6 from the field, 0-of-2 from downtown and 3-of-6 from the line while chipping in four rebounds and a steal.
On Wednesday in Game 5, Porzingis missed all three field goal attempts and grabbed one rebound and one block in 12 first half minutes. He did not start the second half, which led to the legendary Luke Kornet ($3,800) game.
After the game, Joe Mazzulla said that Porzingis had difficult breathing, so he decided to rest him.
Game 6 is in New York on Friday, so Porzingis will have two days to continue recovering.
Kornet played 17 minutes in each of the first two games, but the playing time decreased to 10 and eight minutes the next two games as Porzingis saw his minutes increase. With his performance on Wednesday, the degradation of Porzingis’ health and the absence of Jayson Tatum, there’s a good chance Kornet plays over 20 minutes on Friday. Kornet averaged a respectable 0.93 FPTS per minute during the regular season.
