Kristaps Porzingis is the right man for New York.

BOSTON — Kristaps Porzingis, the one true unicorn, was going to work. The game opened with Al Horford guarding him. Horford is a master of positioning, as crafty as they come, but Horford is 6’9 and Porzingis is 7’3, so the obvious ploy was to shoot over him whenever Porzingis could get an advantage.

KP opened by securing the high post, but his jumper missed the mark. Next he tried attacking the basket on a pick-and-roll, but he couldn’t get all the way to the rim. He then tried to establish low-post position, but there was no entry pass. Finally, he tried to create for himself with a pull-up jumper, but that clanged off the rim.

It went like that for the rest of the night. Porzingis couldn’t connect. Passes and actions that should have funneled through him went nowhere. He couldn’t take advantage of smaller defenders like Horford and Jaylen Brown, and he didn’t do much of anything at all against rookie Semi Ojeleye. For one night, the unicorn was rendered invisible.

His task this season is carrying the team night after night in city after city with all the defensive pressure mounted squarely on his back. Maintaining that level will be the hardest thing for Porzingis. His body makes him unique, and it also makes him a target. He came back from Europe with a maintenance plan to get through the 82 games, focusing on rest and recovery.

“If I can stay fresh throughout the 82 games, then I’ll be fine and I know I’ll be ready to play at a high level,” Porzingis said. “Eating, sleeping, all that. Just non-stop thinking about that. That’s what I did this summer, and that’s what I’m going to try to do this season.”

He will have to deal with smaller defenders — they will all be smaller — getting into his space and trying to cut him down at the knees. He will have to deal with double and even triple teams. Opponents will be physical with him because how else do you try to stop a 7’3 dude with this kind of game? He knows that, and he thinks he will be better prepared.

This was not all about Kristaps. The Knicks were bad on Tuesday night. Really bad. They were so bad that afterward Tim Hardaway Jr. and Courtney Lee both lamented the lack of cohesion on the offensive end. “We were all out there running around like we don’t know what’s going on,” Hardaway said. “And it can’t happen.”

Lee took it a step further: “There were a lot of possessions, like the normal eye might not see it, but we messed up on a lot of plays whether it was the ball getting delivered on time, or one or two guys not being on the same page as far as the play calling. That’s on us, we got to pay attention more in practice and make sure we execute when we’re out there.”

Everyone is entitled to an off night, and Porzingis had been brilliant in his first two games, scoring 64 points in a variety of ways. It’s not that he doesn’t have a go-to move yet: It’s that he has so many options at his disposal with his uncommon range, athleticism, and reach.

Porzingis can do everything and that’s part of the problem. He will have to do a lot of it by himself, given the lack of a penetrating guard or a wing creator. With Carmelo Anthony gone, he is the unquestioned man of the New York Knicks. Welcome to the maelstrom.

Porzingis is just 22 years old, one of the handful of wunderkinds currently playing in the NBA tasked with carrying franchises even while they develop their own games. That task is made harder in that he is playing for a team in the midst of a transition wrapped in a transformation.

That his team is in New York, as opposed to say Milwaukee or Minnesota, means that his every move and every utterance will be chopped up and scrutinized for backpage consumption. He will not be allowed to falter anonymously.

Porzingis is one of the few young players who seems not only equipped to handle New York, but born to play the role. He is funny and sharp enough to spar with the New York press, and he’s blessed with a game that’s been sanctified by every discerning corner of New York fandom. He is their adopted Latvian son, and woe to anyone who tries to mess with him. Including the New York Knicks.

It’s hard to remember a Knick savior who’s ever had this amount of goodwill built up at the beginning of his tenure. Lord knows Latrell Sprewell, Allan Houston, Amar’e Stoudemire, and Anthony had their skeptics and critics throughout their runs. Even the sainted Patrick Ewing had to deal with the ill-fated twin-towers experiment along Bill Cartwright and a handful of coaching changes in his first few seasons.

That will come in handy because this season figures to test everyone’s resolve. The Knicks have a couple of young players they like, including rookie point guard Frank Ntilikina and young big man Willy Hernangomez. But Ntilikina has been dealing with injuries since summer league, and Hernangomez has been dropped from the rotation in favor of Enes Kanter and Kyle O’Quinn.

The Knicks are a year away from being a year away. In an ideal world, they’ll develop their kids while Porzingis adjusts to life as the No. 1 option. They’ll make individual progress while losing a sufficient number of games to draw a high draft pick and take a shot on a player like Luka Doncic, Michael Porter, or Marvin Bagley.

For just about every other franchise in the league, this would be easy. The Knicks are never easy. Porzingis is playing for his third coach in as many seasons, if you count the interim tenure of Kurt Rambis who wanted him to play like it was 1989. He’s also on his third lead executive, if you count the interim run of team president Steve Mills, who signed Hardaway for $71 million before the team hired Scott Perry.

In Perry, there is hope. He is widely respected throughout the league and widely connected. He is not under the spell of a particular basketball philosophy. As a decision-maker, Perry offers the best kind of hope for a rebuilding franchise: patient, restrained, and smart.

The first of many tests to that approach is already happening with Eric Bledsoe, due to be traded after a fallout with Phoenix. Bledsoe is exactly the kind of player the Knicks have pursued in panic-driven maneuvers over the years. While he would undoubtedly help now, he would also compromise a good chunk of their future. The Knicks are reportedly not inclined to deal any of their young players. This is a good sign.

If the Knicks can just give this a little bit of time ... if Ntilinka can be the point guard of their dreams, if Hernangomez can provide an interior complement to Porzingis, if they can simply maneuver from Point A to Point B without a self-inflicted catastrophe, then there is hope.

Porzingis offers the best route toward a long and prosperous run. Teams spend years trying to luck into a player like this in the draft. Landing one is the hardest part, regardless of front office dexterity or brilliant maneuvering. Now he just needs to live up to the role.

“At the end of the day I always try to make things simple for myself,” he said. “I’m just playing basketball out there. I know it’s going to be physical. I know guys are going to try and come at me, but at the end of the day just play basketball and have fun.”

Good luck having fun in New York. The city is many things, but fun hasn’t really been part of the equation. Kristaps Porzingis could be the one to change that dynamic. In many ways, he should be the one to usher in a bold new world for Knicks basketball. It would take a unicorn, frankly.

It would take someone like Kristaps Porzingis.