Steve Popper

Staff Writer, @stevepopper

CLEVELAND -- Kristaps Porzingis sat glumly tucked in his locker, his right foot encased in a walking boot and a hood pulled up over his head. The sprained right ankle, the struggles before he left the game and the sting of reality were weighing on the 21-year-old star-in-waiting.

The reality was depicted in a cartoon he posted on Twitter shortly after he left the room, a two-frame drawing with the first saying, “Your plan,” with a child on a bicycle facing a smooth straight line to the finish, and a second drawing showing “Reality,” with all sorts of pitfalls and obstacles in the path to the finish line. He deleted it moments later, but the message was an accurate one.

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Porzingis, who arrived as a star in his rookie season, dubbed “a unicorn” by Kevin Durant as companies rushed to associate themselves with the young scorer, has begun to see the rock piles and shaky bridges that he must traverse. The only problem is that with the Knicks, even if the obstacles are visible, the finish line is nowhere in sight.

The Knicks dropped to 23-35 on the season with the 119-104 loss to the Cavs at Quicken Loans Arena on Thursday after Knicks president Phil Jackson stood pat at the trade deadline hours earlier. That left Porzingis not just feeling the sting of pain in his ankle, but, like his teammates, with the reality that things weren’t getting better.

All that is left is to limp along the rocky path.

“We have no choice,” Porzingis said. “That’s what we got to do. We want to finish the season halfway decent. We got to give our all now these last whatever games we have. Just for ourselves and to give the fans enjoyment, we just need to give everything we have.

“Hopefully, we can get on a run. That would be the best scenario. It’s tough. It’s tough. We haven’t still found that connection where we can just play free and playing our basketball. We’re still trying to find that. Hopefully, we can do it soon and get on a roll.”

It didn’t look likely with Porzingis injured -- he was examined by team doctors Friday morning in New York and it was determined that there was no ligament damage, but he would miss Saturday's game against Philadelphia -- and with the players around him looking dazed after weeks of trade rumors resulted in a lot of smoke and no action.

Carmelo Anthony, whom the team very openly tried to push to waive his no-trade clause, never had to be asked, since Jackson could not find a deal for him. That left Anthony wondering aloud after the deadline exactly what the plan was for the Knicks and if he understood the vision of the front office.

“No, not now. No, to be honest with you,” Anthony said. “No. I think they were kind of planning on the trade deadline, whether they were trying to make moves I think that was one plan. Now they’ve got to get back to the drawing board and come up with another plan about the future of this team.”

Porzingis could have shown him the cartoon. It seemed pretty accurate.

Email: popper@northjersey.com