Denver Nuggets Riding With Michael Porter Jr.’s Ups And Downs, And It’s Paying Off

Damian Lillard was “shaking his damn head.”

Lillard, the Portland Trail Blazers’ five-time All-Star and four-time All-NBA guard, who also was voted “Best Leader” by the league’s general managers in their 2019-20 survey, was responding to controversial comments made by Denver Nuggets rookie forward Michael Porter Jr. following his team’s loss in Game 4 of their second-round playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Porter was frustrated after the game, following a tough loss in which he shot five of six, and three of four on three-pointers for 15 points in the first half, but went scoreless in the second after missing his only two shots and rarely getting his hands on the rock.

“I just didn’t touch the ball,” Porter said when asked if the Clippers had changed how they were guarding him. “They didn’t do anything differently.”

Once that door was opened, Porter did not hold back, proceeding to make remarks which were widely perceived as calling out not only head coach Michael Malone and his coaching staff, but perhaps his teammates as well.

“That’s really up to the play calls, that’s really up to the coaches, who they want to put the ball in whose hands,” Porter continued when asked what he could do to get more involved in Denver’s offense.

He went on two say that he “couldn’t get mad” when the team kept going to its star duo of Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray, who Porter described as “two amazing players,” but also made it a point to state that “to beat that team we’ve gotta get more players involved.”

Following up on his initial “smdh” reaction, Lillard tweeted in reply to the notion Porter wasn’t “technically wrong” the very unambiguous response that, “Yes he is wrong. If you know you know and ima leave it at that.”

Few players’ opinions in the NBA carry as much weight as Lillard’s, but he was not alone in expressing disapproval of Porter’s comments.

Now-retired former Nuggets point guard Jameer Nelson, a one-time All-Star and respected leader with a 14-year NBA career, also chimed in on Twitter, saying, “Talking to your coach and teammates behind closed doors is the best way to express any Type of frustration. Especially in the playoffs!”

Nelson went on to elaborate that “Young dudes feel entitled and don’t understand the offense runs thru the best players.”

“The issue isn’t what he said, it’s when he said it,” Nelson explained. “That’s a covertsion [sic] that stays in house. Handle it with your teammates and coaches. Not in the media.”

The hullabaloo created by Porter’s statements raised a specter of doubt over both how they would be received by his coaches and teammates, and whether there might be any repercussions. (In 2017, for instance, the Chicago Bulls fined Dwyane Wade, Jimmy Butler and Rajon Rondo, and benched usual starters Wade and Butler for publicly making comments critical of the team.)

And Porter’s latest comments were not his first public faux pas. In two separate incidents on Snapchat, he first inadvertently leaked NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s personal phone number last year by posting a photo containing it, and more recently in a July Q&A he made some fairly outlandish conspiratorial claims, asserting that the coronavirus was being used for population control, and dipping into some arguably anti-vaccination rhetoric.

But despite Porter repeatedly putting a strain the Nuggets PR staff and, potentially, his relationships with Denver’s coaches and teammates, his blunders have appeared to come far more from honest missteps (and perhaps miseducation) than any sort of malice.

Porter showed contrition and a willingness to learn and grow from the feedback surrounding his comments, even as he double down on them. “I stand by what I say,” he told the media after Denver’s dramatic come-from-behind Game 5 win, but quickly added, “and I didn’t mean it in any kind of disrespectful way or anything like that. Coaches and my teammates all know that.”

And perhaps more importantly – arguably far more importantly for an NBA basketball team – Porter’s unbridled skill and upside, and the speed with which he has already become an integral and indispensable key to the Nuggets’ success on the court, go a long way toward smoothing over what, by comparison, should ultimately prove to be relatively minor distractions.

In his pregame presser, Michael Malone echoed the sentiments of Lillard and Nelson that even when players are frustrated it’s important to avoid distractions in the playoffs, and that “it is much better to keep those conversations internal in the locker room and amongst ourselves.”

But down three games to one in the series and in a critical win-or-go home situation, Malone also demonstrated through the actions of his rotational decisions that if Porter’s remarks had been problematic in any way, he was more than willing to put those behind him and the team.

Malone played Porter for the final 13 minutes and 23 seconds of the game, including the entirety of the fourth quarter, in what would prove to be a well-played gamble that keeping the rookie in the game would pay off.

Despite once again taking very few shots in the game – Porter had zero makes on just two shot attempts until there was just over a minute remaining in the game – the rookie was finding ways to make himself valuable on the court with rebounding and defense.

In one key sequence early in the fourth quarter which Porter described as “a big momentum play,” he pulled down the rebound off a missed shot by Marcus Morris which was well-defended by Mason Plumlee, then initiated the fast break on the grab-and-go to return the ball to Plumlee for an emphatic alley-oop which brought the Nuggets to within two points of the Clippers after having trailed by as many as 16:

Irrespective of any disruption Porter’s comments may have caused, Malone trusted him to close out the game, and the favor was returned in kind.

In Porter’s most dramatic sequence of the night, one which effectively sealed the Nuggets’ victory, he made his one and only basket of the game with 1:11 remaining, draining a contested catch-and-shoot three-pointer to increase Denver’s lead from two to five points, following that up two possessions later with a spectacular block on the much-bigger Ivica Zubac and securing the rebound. He also went on to sink all four of his free throws in the final 30 seconds of the game.

The three days from Game 4 through Game 5 encapsulate in a microcosm a host of dimensions found in the bigger Michael Porter Jr. picture: the promise and excitement of budding stardom and superlative talent on which he’s increasingly delivering; the frustrations – both his and the teams – as he struggles to both learn how to defend in the NBA and how to mesh in with a well-established offense with Jokic and Murray dominating the primary ball handling; and the growing pains of a young man with a unique personality who’s struggling to simultaneously assert his own identity and presence both on and off the court while respecting the fact that he has a long way to go in his development, and much to learn from more experienced teammates – many of whom he is quickly passing in Denver’s pecking order.

The growing pains for Porter and the Nuggets are at once made more pronounced and more worth powering through by the rapid pace of his development, both in terms of his physical play on the court and his mental comprehension of the way and speed the game is played at the NBA level.

In no area has this been more clearly evident than Porter’s defense. Against the Utah Jazz in round one, he was effectively getting played off the court after becoming Donovan Mitchell’s favorite target to exploit and hammer again and again. It was a rude awakening – and an invaluable educational experience – following Porter’s breakout offensive performances in the NBA bubble seeding games.

But fast-forward from there to a not-too-distant future, and Porter (with a great degree of help from Denver’s coaching staff) has figured out how to not only limit his defensive liabilities, but to optimize his physical tools in the service of rebounding, shot altering, getting long arms into passing lanes and – along with other lengthy Nuggets players like Jerami Grant, Jokic and Plumlee – swarming opposing ball handlers (in the case of the current series most often Kawhi Leonard) and wrapping them up like a bird’s nest weaved from long, pesky limbs.

Porter’s big block on Zubac was, in a very real way, the cumulative embodiment of a learning curve which took place over only 12 playoff games.

And in fact, Porter has been one of the Nuggets players who has most positively impacted Denver’s performance on the court.

Though Porter’s stat line shows he is not scoring at even close to the much higher volumes generated by Denver’s established star duo – his 11.7 points per game places him at a distant third on the team after Murray (26.5) and Jokic 25.4) – he has actually been the Nuggets’ most efficient player in terms of points per 100 possessions when he’s on the court:

Porter is currently the only Nuggets player with seven or more playoff games this postseason to have a positive net rating, and that he does by a wide margin, with his plus-7.7 is followed by Murray’s minus-0.6, according to NBA.com. Interestingly, he was in the same ballpark in both the Utah series (plus-7.9) as he has been against the Clippers so far (plus-7.3), but with dramatic discrepancies between the offensive and defensive numbers. His 98.4 defensive rating against Los Angeles is second best on the team, and leaps and bounds better than his 114.9 against the Jazz, but with his offensive rating declining (from 122.8 to 105.7) in almost direct proportion.

With a .543 effective field goal percentage (eFG%, which accounts for the added value of three-point shots), Porter also ranks as the third-most efficient shooter for the Nuggets in the 2020 playoffs after Nikola Jokic (.587) and Jamal Murray (.578). He additionally has been Denver’s second-leading rebounder with 6.9 per game after Jokic’s 9.6.

Beyond all the numbers, the threat Porter presents as a scorer also commands far more gravity than some of his teammates with less offensive aptitude (most notably Torrey Craig), and as such helps to keep defenses honest and makes life easier for Jokic, Murray and others even when Porter isn’t actually shooting. And against the stifling defense the Clippers can throw at Denver, hounding Jamal Murray in particular with Leonard, Patrick Beverley and Paul George as they blitz the Nuggets’ pick-and-rolls, having Porter on the court to help space the floor and draw defenders away from the ball handler is particularly valuable.

Including his 12 playoff games, Michael Porter Jr. has played a total of 67 games and 1204 minutes in his young NBA career. He is still very much a rookie, and as such, he will no doubt continue to make his share of mistakes both on and off the court.

But he is only going to keep getting better, and he is already doing so at such a fast pace that he has transformed from “player who might struggle to find minutes” a year ago before the season started to “player the Denver Nuggets cannot succeed without” in the current playoffs.

So while the Michael Porter Jr. experience may be a bit of a wild ride, with occasional downswings that are tough to weather, as his peaks continue to climb higher, and come more frequently, the Nuggets will ultimately reap the most benefit by fully committing to the journey.