NBA Rumors: Kristaps Porzingis' Debut In Wizards Uniform May Not Happen This Season

The Washington Wizards took in Kristaps Porzingis before the NBA trade deadline, which seemed like a huge acquisition on paper.

What the Wizards may have overlooked is the fact that they also inherited a player who has struggled through injuries since he entered the league in 2015.

In the six seasons that he has been in the league, the Latvian center has been unable to complete the regular season alone.

The most games he has played were in his rookie year with the New York Knicks.

At that time, the 7-foot-3 cager played 72 games, averaging 14.3 points 7.3 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks.

Since then, Porzingis has played less, the next-most of which was 66 games in his sophomore season.

He missed the 2018-19 season with an ACL injury and has more or less been able to play only 44 games in the last three seasons.

This season, he has played in only 34 games and seeing him pick play for the rest of the season is not looking good.

Porzingis has yet to play this season and the usual response given is that he is on a day-to-day basis, NBC Sports reported.

Wizards coach Wes Unseld was asked if there was a reliable date on when to expect Porzingis, but he still stuck the day-to-day response about the Latvian cager.

This could be telling on the Wizards who are one game behind the 10th spot of the Eastern Conference.

They do have one of the lightest scheduled in their final 21 assignment, something that will help them to at least make it to the play-in tournament.

A win over the Atlanta Hawks in their next outing could give them a big boost. But there is no denying that Porzingis could provide a boost if he is good to play.

Durability has been a problem for Porzingis, something that ex-Knicks executive Phil Jackson was cautious about back in 2015.

“Phil Jackson was saying, 'well you know these really tall players, they have health issues.' They always have pretty often these injury problems. And everybody was going ‘what is Phil Jackson saying that for?’ Phil could really throw a wrench with his mind games,” veteran American journalist and book author Roland Lazenby stated when he appeared on the Sports Bytes PH podcast.