After star player Kristaps Porzingis suffered a gruesome injury in the middle of a losing streak, the New York Knicks saw their promising season come into a crashing halt. Sure enough, the team only managed to win six of their remaining 27 games, stumbling into a 29-53 finish. Head coach Jeff Hornacek was promptly fired after the season concluded, replaced by David Fizdale, formerly of the Memphis Grizzlies.

But despite the bad year and the sacking of Hornacek, Tim Hardaway Jr. — a fan of “Horny” whom he credits for the best season of his career — is all smiles during the exit interviews, even as he expresses his frustrations on the lack of permanence, in both the front office and the sidelines.

After all, the 26 year-old has been through harder times. Barbara Barker of Newsday was on hand to cover the Las Vegas Summer League with Hardaway Jr. in attendance to support his fellow Knicks, and the 6-foot-6 guard shared his struggles with depression to the point that he almost considered quitting the game.

Hardaway, a first-round draft pick and son of five-time All-Star Tim Hardaway, had just played his first game in the NBA’s G League. His team, the Canton Charge, lost and he shot poorly. After eating a postgame meal from McDonald’s, he watched as his teammates stretched out on the floor of the team bus as they made a five-hour drive home through the snow back to Ohio.

“I was second-guessing myself at the time, thinking about if I really wanted to play,” Hardaway recalled last week before a Knicks summer league game. “It was a dark period.”

It's a good thing that the former Michigan Wolverine reconsidered.

A few years later, the Knicks (who originally drafted Hardaway Jr.) whisked him away from the Atlanta Hawks with a four-year, $71 million contract, widely considered to be the richest deal for a player of his stature, and he's hoping he's there to stay for good.