In some ways, the Denver Nuggets have had a Game Night of a season. That’s a film from 2018, a comedy-mystery that stars Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Jesse Plemons, and a plethora of other funny Hollywood folks. Its gist: a group of friends gets together somewhat frequently for game night – shocking – which they take somewhat seriously.
This time, Jason Bateman’s character’s older, cooler brother, played by Kyle Chandler, crashes the party and devises this wild mystery game; it’s interactive, requires teams to solve riddles, and naturally, given that this can’t just be a movie about Chutes and Ladders, things go off the rails. There are spies tracking Chandler’s character, hijinks ensue, the whole nine. It’s hysterical.
I can understand if you’re wracking your brain to find how in the world this describes the season of an NBA team. I’m getting there.
Despite key injuries, the Denver Nuggets have remained afloat in their playoff push. For that, they have a second star to thank in Michael Porter Jr.
There’s a bit more to the gist: This movie doesn’t just have a lot of twists and turns. It, in and of itself, is a twist and turn. Characters are kidnapped, and then suddenly found. They die, but then, oh, what? They didn’t die? (At one point, Rachel McAdams’ character sees an enemy fly into the running engine of a jet, celebrates, but then realizes what happened and exclaims, “Oh, no, he died!”) It’s that kind of film you never know what’s going to happen next, and even when you do know, you don’t really know. You know?
And that’s, in some ways, what the Denver Nuggets have dealt with this season, a morass of unknowns, many of which have come in the form of injuries to pivotal rotational players. Jamal Murray went down with a torn ACL on April 14, ruling him out for the rest of the season (and possibly some of next). If the Nuggets weren’t dead in the water after that travesty, surely they’d be hopeless following hamstring injuries to Monte Morris and Will Barton, both of whom have played an average of more than 25 minutes per game and have been out since April 16 and 23, respectively.
Sure, they have Nikola Jokic, but how could they possibly rebound given the losses of three key contributors?
The idea that the Denver Nuggets are dead in the water is irresponsible, especially considering the star in their midst
With once-ascendant title hopes looking grim, and the season’s silver lining coming down to whether or not people will use their brains and award Nikola Jokic his most-deserving first MVP award, Mike Malone’s squad went back to the drawing board in the hopes of finding a solution. They didn’t have to look very far.
Enter Michael Porter Jr., whose draft stock once plummeted due to lingering back issues and a small real-basketball sample size at the college level, but lest we forget was once considered to be the best player in his class and the presumptive top pick in whatever draft he ended up entering. For him to fall into Denver’s lap at 14 in 2018 all-but forced the Nuggets to take him; at the time, the risk may have matched the potential, but to have the option of taking a possibly transcendent teenager in the middle of the first round is pass up a free coffee that the Starbucks barista made by accident. What’s the worst that can happen?
While his first two seasons seemed to hint at the proverbial worst actually happening – they were sputtering affairs in which Porter missed a lot of time while rehabbing his back, and when he did see the court, would turn in efficient, if still middling results – his ascendant third season has been cause for chatter. Without Jamal Murray and the rest of the injury report roster, Porter was thrust into a second option role, not something he’s unfamiliar with, but certainly something he had yet to experience on the professional level. He’s made it work, and then some.
Porter’s averages on the year are up in just about every category, but since Murray’s injury, he’s been providing offense at a blistering clip. Since April 14, Porter is scoring 25 points per game, just 2.1 points less than Jokic, and shooting 56.9 percent from the field on 16.5 shot attempts. From three, he’s shooting roughly eight times per game and making just a tick under 50 percent of those attempts. Just last night, he became the third Denver Nuggets player in the last 20 seasons to score 15 or more points in 30 straight games — the others are Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony, decent company to keep.
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For overall context, Michael Porter Jr.’s season averages sit at 18.9 points per game on 54 percent shooting from the field and 44 from three. So, either way, he’s been quite good this year. This significant rise, however, wasn’t necessarily a given.
It also hasn’t necessarily been a given that Porter would be viewed as someone players would want to play alongside, or a player coaches would want to coach. He’s never been afraid to speak his mind on how any number of situations are handled, and who by – last year, he blamed a Los Angeles Clippers’ team doctor for his fall in the draft, and also called out his coaching staff in Denver due to a lack of touches in a game the Nuggets lost. To his credit, though, this season has served, in some ways, as a sort of refresher. Perhaps you’ve forgotten, he might say, that I was once a five-star recruit. Perhaps you’ve forgotten, he might also offer, that I’m better than you.
He doesn’t wear that same zest on his sleeve – at least not always. Porter’s mug often remains still, as if detached from the action. An ESPN camera might slowly zoom in on his face ahead of an out-of-bounds play and cause viewers to wonder aloud, “does he know they’re about to play?” Their fears are quickly disposed of when the 6-foot-10-inch sharpshooter skips off a flare screen to catch, shoot, and drain a triple from 28 feet out. Oh, and even better: it’s still only the first quarter. He’ll hit seven more of those before the night is over.
While the above is an observation, a hypothetical, the situation isn’t uncommon for Porter – him coming off screens, or playing in pick-and-roll situations, that is. At least not since April 14; he’s working off screens 17 times per game since then, as opposed to 9.4 times before, receiving handoffs 5.6 times (2.4 previously), operating in the pick-and-roll game 2.9 times (up from 1.2), and taking it himself in an isolation set 2.6 times (that was just 1.2 before Murray’s injury). In some ways, albeit sick, Murray’s injury has benefitted the Nuggets in the sense that they now have a better idea of what Porter can offer them from an offensive standpoint.
The concerns scouts had about Michael Porter Jr.’s offensive production have been reduced to rubble with his efficiency and skills on full display this season
Defensively, he’s competent and capable, perhaps not of stopping Kevin Durant or Giannis Antetokounmpo any given night, but still serviceable. Offensively, he’s a different animal, shooting at an exceptional clip and possessing a leaping ability off the dribble that almost mimics what common folk could only replicate if they were jumping inside a zero-gravity chamber. And though he does owe a good majority of his production, at least in part, to Jokic – who has assisted Porter on 33 percent of his makes since April 6, per Second Spectrum – he’s growing as a solo creator.
His shot frequency at the rim is down from 41 percent last season to 31 percent this season, per Cleaning the Glass, but his frequency in every other area has increased, along with his effective field goal percentage (64.4 percent, in the league’s 98th percentile). It’s even better since April 14 (up to 69.8 percent).
Even if his frequency at the rim has dropped, he is, at the very least, willing to create off the dribble more often this season than he has previously in his career. His catch-and-shoot hallmark will endure; if you were taller than every defender, and had a stroke as lethal, if not as fluid as Kevin Durant’s, wouldn’t it be yours, too? But to see him try new things – pulling up after blowing by defenders, cutting for easy buckets at the rim, attacking to create them himself, etc. – is as encouraging as it gets.
Though this is undoubtedly at risk of reading as an MPJ lovefest, the “flaws” in his game are things that other teammates make up for. No, not even make up for, which implies that his lack of assists, for example, are negatively impacting his team: they do it instead of Porter Jr. doing it, as his skill set is better used elsewhere. He does leave a bit to be desired when it comes to taking care of the ball, seeing that he has more total turnovers than he does assists this season (66 to 60, which is admittedly scary).
But it’s less dire for him to facilitate to others, given that he’s teammates with a guy who doubles as this season’s presumptive MVP and the best passing big man in NBA history, as well as a litany of guards who are better passers and lesser scoring threats. If Porter begins to refine his passing game and to take better care of the pumpkin when he has it, it will merely serve as an additional Infinity Stone to his personal Infinity Gauntlet. Then, with a snap of his fingers, everyone will be at risk, not just those dealing with him on-ball.
It’s disrespectful to count the Nuggets out given the length of their injury report just as it was counterproductive for 13 teams to fear a 19-year-old’s rehab process over projecting his future. And it was silly for fans and analysts to assume they knew what could happen next this season, no matter how certain their theories seemed to be.
As evidenced by Michael Porter Jr.’s significant, perhaps unforeseen leap, we don’t know what we think we know. We thought we knew that the Denver Nuggets were dead in the water. But their second star – yes, we’re there now – is making sure we now know that we don’t know what we think we know… you know?