It was always a little remarkable how quick people were to declare Frank Ntilikina a bust. Some of that osrs gold wasn't his fault. Some of that was residual anger loitering after Phil Jackson was exiled days after selecting Ntilikina as one of the last transactions of his stormy tenure. The anger was understandable, the skepticism plausible.
It just wasn't very fair to the kid.And, please remember, he was a kid just 18 years old when Jackson picked him with the eighth pick of the 2017 draft and that he's still a kid (fewer than 100 days past his 20th birthday). There may be an abstract age limit to being a prodigy, but there isn't one to merely being precocious enough to intrigue.
We saw flashes of that last year.We are seeing chunks of that now.This is what's called progress, even on a team that isn't being graded against a curve the way the Knicks are. Really, as much as this offends the mathletes among us, all you really need to do is trust your eyes: he's better now than he was then. But we'll only know by watching.
In a way, Ntilikina's story resembles Kristaps Porzingis'; he may not have inspired cheers and jeers of outrage on draft night, but it wasn't as if Knicks fans were rushing out to flood the box office. Porzingis' true arrival happened quicker: many nights in his rookie year he really did look like the best player on the floor already.
That didn't happen for Ntilikina last year, and there are still times when the game seems to go a revolution or two too quickly for him. But the more reps he gets, the more intriguing he looks. Not every night. Not every game. But enough. And in this season of limited expectation, enough is well, often enough.
"Most of the time our point guard is organizing us," Fizdale said. "And he's excellent at that. That's something, I didn't want to force that on him. Let him feel out the offense, let him see where guys score from, where opportunities come from, let him guard bigger people, multiple people. Now that I'm putting him back there it's a different view of things."