Porzingis making progress, remains out until at least February

New York Knicks star Kristaps Porzingis is making progress on his left ACL injury and will be re-evaluated in mid-February, the team announced Friday.

The 7-foot-3 power forward is undergoing a systematic rehab with the team's medical staff before progressing to on-court team drills and activities.

“There will be a series of benchmarks that we’ll still measure as we’re going through this,” president Steve Mills said, according to the New York Post's Marc Berman. “But then we’ll have another in mid-February. We feel like we’ll have enough data and enough information to make another assessment to see exactly where he is.”

While the club prefers to see Porzingis back on the court this season, the Knicks aren't willing to put the Latvian in jeopardy.

“I think we would like him to play and hope that he plays as soon as he’s comfortable playing,” Mills said. “We’d like him to get on the court, we’d love to see him play, but we also acknowledge that he is a really, really important part of the long-term future of this franchise. And the one thing we’re not going to do is take any real risk with a 23-year-old player in his position.”

Porzingis hasn't played since suffering the injury last February against the Milwaukee Bucks. He has participated in some on-court work with coaches.

“What he’s done is he’s progressed to the point where he’s able to do some one-on-one,” Mills said. “... He’s at the point now where he’s able to do 45-minute sessions on the floor with our coaches to go through a bunch of on-court activities.”

During the 2017-18 season, the 23-year-old averaged a career-high 22.7 points per contest in 48 games en route to his first All-Star appearance.