Dolan, as the team’s owner, needs to stop hiding behind Jackson and remember that within a few years Porzingis will have free-agent options. In a recent interview with a Latvian magazine, Porzingis, while expressing a diplomatic desire to remain in New York, added that winning would be his priority and the motivation in any eventual long-term decision-making process.

Yes, we heard that from Porzingis’s early career mentor, Carmelo Anthony, who ultimately re-signed with the Knicks as a free agent, talking himself into the belief of Jackson as the franchise savior. Just a hunch, but the Knicks shouldn’t count on Porzingis hanging around New York beyond his contractual obligation just for the sake of building his brand.

Porzingis has played for three coaches in two seasons. Derek Fisher, coach No. 1, was whacked by Jackson halfway through Porzingis’s rookie season. Kurt Rambis, coach No. 2, was widely disliked and distrusted as Jackson’s puppet. Jeff Hornacek, coach No. 3, was promised by Jackson the freedom to implement the offense of his choosing and then embarrassingly usurped.

Compound the coaching carousel with the triangle travails; Jackson’s bizarre behavior toward Anthony, the news media and others; and the excellent view Porzingis had from the free-throw line of Charles Oakley being hustled out of Madison Square Garden by security guards in February, and who would blame him for wondering what difference there is between the N.B.A. and the A.C.B. league in Spain?

In the season before he came here, Porzingis was a rising teenager for C.B. Sevilla, a franchise on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In deep financial trouble, ownership was transferred from a Spanish bank to an American entrepreneur, who turned out to be a cyclone of destabilization, wrecking the season and almost causing the team to fold.

After Porzingis was drafted by the Knicks, his older brother and adviser, Janis, told The New York Times that Kristaps had been unfazed by the misadventures in Spain. “Maybe for the older players, what happened there affected them more because it’s their job, their way to make money,” he said. “For the younger ones, I think it was easier because they only want to play, get better.”

That was then. The Knicks are now. Porzingis knows he hasn’t wasted his time in New York, but he believes both losing seasons were made much worse by a noxious environment. A person in the N.B.A. familiar with Porzingis’s situation and speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on Knicks personnel, said Porzingis had been expressing frustration with the operation of the franchise as far back as December.