New York • Of all the unforeseeable marriages on an inexplicable planet, here's the one between that great-big loudmouth, New York, and the chill dude from the third-largest city in unobtrusive Latvia, a country with almost two million people, fewer than Brooklyn. Here they are at 31 months, and here any streaming electronic graphic would show them on uptick.

Three seasons of this marriage between skyscraper and skyscrapers, and he's still looking out his skyborne window and saying, "It's breathtaking every time I look." He's reeling off the list of sights that once appeared only on screens and saying, "As a kid, you're dreaming of how it is in person, but now it's like living in a dream, almost." Here the city will drive him to crave tranquility sometimes, and then when he's away in, say, Latvia, he'll start missing the city.

That sounds suspiciously like, you know, a New Yorker.

That's even if Kristaps Porzingis does carry around the inconvenience of 7 feet and 3 inches, which means he can't really take much of a walk because, as his older brother Janis puts it, "You can't put on a hat and hide." And that's even if it was only early June 2015 when he first set eyes upon this impossible human construction, and: "I remember the first thing, like, that kind of blew my mind, but I was surprised to see was, the yellow taxis that you see in the movies. That was the first thing. I was like, 'They're the same.' It's kind of funny. I remember [thinking], 'That's how it is, actually.' "

So as Porzingis, the New York Knicks' centerpiece, figures to become an NBA all-star on Tuesday evening, and as his fellow players actually already voted him a starter (though he was edged out by the fan vote — "Players know," Porzingis told New York reporters matter-of-factly) and as he has the evolutionary game and the 23 points per and the mere 22 years of age, he said on Saturday after practice in Los Angeles, "Actually, I have a really good story."

By all means, proceed.

"When I was about 13 or something, my brother saved up some money because he always wanted to go to New York City," a reference to Janis Porzingis, 35, who played professional basketball in at least — inhale, here — Latvia, Lithuania, Austria, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Croatia, and who helps Kristaps these days as his agent.

Continuing: "Maybe he told you this story already."

He did, but by all means, proceed.

"He saved up some money to go to New York City. And he'd just bought a camera, too, actually, at that point. He took thousands of pictures, and he put it all in my computer, I think it was on my computer, or it was in a flash drive, or something like that. I can't remember, exactly. And we had to exchange files or whatever, and accidentally, I deleted all of the pictures. And I felt terrible. I felt so bad. I was at a camp at that moment, and he called me. He was like, 'Where's the pictures?' I was like, 'Oh.' I just felt so horrible."

When I returned home after camp, "I was like, 'I'm gonna make it up to you, and once I make some money, I'm gonna get you a new trip, so you can go to New York City.' And now it all happened this way, and now we're living in New York City."

So he makes it all this way from Liepaja, a windy city on the Baltic Sea, to life on his own in Spain at 15, to the fourth overall pick in the 2015 NBA draft which famously took some of that glum tribe, Knicks fans, and made them glummer, on past some hints at a trade last spring which scared those same fans, toward next month's NBA All-Star Game, all because he accidentally deleted thousands of New York photos?

"A hundred percent," he said with a wink and his above-average wit.

At times this season, Madison Square Garden has seemed, in a word oft-foreign this century, fun. It has featured its share of "MVP" chants for Porzingis. Maybe you haven't lived until you've seen couples in concessions lines, a woman wearing a Porzingis No. 6, her other half in a No. 3 J-J-J-John Starks.

The Knicks, with Carmelo Anthony's star-shine gone to Oklahoma City after seven-plus seasons, have nudged to 10th in the Eastern Conference, following on 12th in 2016-17, 13th in 2015-16 and 15th (among 15 teams) in 2014-15. They nibbled a lot around .500 before a January fraught with road trips steered them to 21-26 as of Monday. Porzingis has progressed utterly, majored in third-season riddle-solving. Even after an audacious November yielded to the usual grinding NBA reality, his points per game average has hiked from 18.1 last season to 23.3 in this campaign. His three-point percentage, an evolutionary curiosity given his height, has gone from 35.7 to 38.5. He has handled bad games with aplomb, has piled good games atop his bad games and has advanced his understanding of when to make offense and when to let others do so.

As one astute opponent, Memphis Grizzlies center Marc Gasol, put it: "I don't know how many guys you've seen that are 7-3 that can shoot the ball that way, right? And that can actually, you know, put it on the floor with the notion of where he's going to. Like, he knows where he wants to get to [on the court], and he's comfortable taking those shots. And you can see, at the same time, that he can still grow a lot, in a lot of positions, and make the game even more efficient for him, and easier. So by the time he figures all those things out - and, I think, watching him, especially through the summer, which the national team, you could see, you know, a lot of switches getting flipped on him, and what it is to carry a team."

So in the city of Namath and Frazier and Jackson and L.T. and Ewing and Messier and Piazza and Jeter, yet a city kind of lean on giants in the 2010s, this chill giant has a chance to become a New York giant long term. Hailing from his country overrun with wars and a Soviet Union in the 20th century, a healthy country whose most recent independence began in 1991, an impressive gumdrop of land with a reigning French Open champion, Jelena Ostapenko, he fits. He fits in part because, like New York, he works.

He's the owner of "a big heart" and "very humble" and "a very chill person," his teammate and friend Willy Hernangomez said, and he works. He's described by new teammate Enes Kanter as, "There is not much guys in the NBA like that," because "people are just, 'He's so good,' whatever, but at the same time he's making everybody else better around him," and he works. He's not an introvert per se, and he tries to quell his occasional hesitancy about approaching strangers with an understanding that they approach with support. He's also witty enough to blow his nose before a group interview, then turn around and tell reporters it's part of interview preparation.

Also, he works.

"Yeah, I think he can do this because he is so calm and he is so sure of himself," Janis Porzingis said. "And I think that comes a lot from his parents, were older, my parents, at the time. They were more calm. They had gone through me and Martins [now 32], and so on. So they treated him differently. Martins treated him horribly" — Janis grinned there — "which makes him stronger mentally. That is the reason why he is the way he is. So those things don't shake him much — criticism, or whatever. This city, if you make some mistakes, they will let you know about it. Kris can do it. Kris can kind of withstand that."

His life, for now, goes "do my job, back home, get some rest," he said, and that does sound like many a New York life. A room in his apartment has turned into a sort of "therapy room," Janis Porzingis said, because the leadership role has flung more fatigue and "because constantly there's something swollen, something, [and] he takes care of all that."

Routinely, he also gets to drive.

Fortunately, the Knicks' practice facility is in the wilderness of Westchester County, above the city.

If that's not optimal for some, it's optimal for one 22-year-old with enough sense to remember to look out the windows in life.

"I love driving, so I love spending that half an hour in my car," Kristaps Porzingis said. "It's a weird thing, but I just love driving, and just thinking, whatever. I love those 30 minutes. Those are the special 30 minutes for me during the day, going here, and back, from the practice facility … I listen to music, but I usually just think. I think some things, and a lot of times I just remember stuff I haven't thought about in a long time, and I just remember, 'How did I forget this?' I swear, it's weird, but … "