NEW YORK _ In case any doubts were planted earlier this week by his brother/agent, Kristaps Porzingis professed his love for New York on Friday.
The still-smitten Garden certainly requited in kind.
Porzingis netted 37 points, one shy of the career-high he'd established just two games earlier, as the Knicks regrouped quickly from Wednesday's blowout loss to Houston with a decisive 120-107 home win over Phoenix.
Enes Kanter contributed 16 points and 15 rebounds, while Tim Hardaway Jr. added 21 points for the Knicks, who have won four of five games since an 0-3 start. Devin Booker led the Suns (4-5) with 34.
It marked the sixth time in eight games this season that Porzingis, who again heard frequent chants of "MVP" from the home crowd and left to a standing ovation, has recorded at least 30 points.
Late in the fourth quarter, Porzingis enlivened the home crowd with a scintillating sequence, blocking a drive by Phoenix's Josh Jackson at the defensive end before slamming home a dunk and sinking the ensuing free throw for a 113-95 lead.
Before the game, the 7-foot-3 forward held a damage-control scrum with the media to address an interview his brother Janis had granted to a Latvian magazine this week in which he intimated that his younger sibling eventually would consider bolting New York if he's unhappy with the direction of the team when he's eligible to become a restricted free agent in 2019.
Janis Porzingis also suggested that Kristaps' infamous skipping of his exit meeting with then-president Phil Jackson last spring was to enact change in the organization because since-traded All-Star Carmelo Anthony "and people around him never tried to change anything."
While suggesting the translated quotes on both fronts were "taken out of context," Kristaps Porzingis insisted he loves New York and that he sees himself "as a Knick for a long, long time."
"I don't think (the fans) should be worried about that," he added.
No one inside the Garden appeared especially concerned as Porzingis came out firing and netted 10 quick points on a combination of jumpers and drives before the game was seven minutes old.
"That stuff, as far as we're concerned is in the past. KP's been great this year," Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said before the game. "I think he's really stepped it up for the guys and our team. He seems really happy now, so that's where I'll leave it."
Porzingis wasn't the only hot Knick in the early going, with Kanter falling a rebound shy of registering a double-double by halftime and Hardaway also reaching double figures in points by intermission.
With Phoenix missing 22 of its first 27 shots in the opening quarter, the cruising Knicks were up by as many as 21 early in the second before reaching the half with a 65-50 advantage.
It was a marked improvement at both ends for the Knicks, who were coming off a particularly porous defensive effort two nights earlier against James Harden and the Rockets.
"We were not at the defensive level we were in the previous games," Hornacek said of Wednesday's loss. "We were guarding guys, but we were maybe an arm's length away from them rather than getting up into guys so our aggressiveness on the defensive side wasn't there."
The Suns similarly had rebounded nicely from an 0-3 start that cost head coach Earl Watson his job and landed guard Eric Bledsoe in exile while awaiting a trade. Phoenix had four of its previous five games under interim coach Jay Triano.
"I think they're a bunch of young guys, they're just playing and not thinking about the game," Hornacek said. "They're just going out there and getting up and down the court. They're pressuring defensively a little bit more. They're just a bunch of young guys that are out there right now on a pretty good roll."
Porzingis flushed a missed Hardaway jumper for a one-handed stuff early in the third. The Suns cut the deficit to six on a dunk by former Knicks center Tyson Chandler four minutes into the period, but three straight late buckets by Michael Beasley (season-high 11 points off the bench) pushed the advantage to 92-76 entering the final quarter.
