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Thursday 30 January 2020 17:05, UK
Michael Porter Jr's continuous growth over the course of this season has seen the Denver Nuggets, once stagnating off the pace of the two Los Angeles teams in the chase for the Western Conference title, find an extra gear.
In previous looks at the Denver Nuggets, we have looked at how, although the NBA as a whole is moving away from two-post line-ups in favour of stretch fours - which are now so commonplace as to be the norm - they are the one team that have largely acted in defiance of that. The Nuggets have remained big where most others have gone small. And with one of the NBA's better defenses to show for it even though Nikola Jokic himself is not an impressive defender in any area of the court, it has largely worked.
This past preseason, we also explored how Denver had opted for continuity in an era of high player turnover and when most of their rivals at the top of the NBA had made significant changes. This past summer, the Nuggets lost only Brandon Goodwin, Tyler Lydon, Trey Lyles, Isaiah Thomas and Thomas Welsh from their team, and of those, only Lyles was a rotation player. He had not been a good one, either, and the acquisition of Jerami Grant from the Oklahoma City Thunder more than offset his departure.
But that was it. Grant's acquisition and signing a couple of second-round picks in the forms of Vlatko Cancar and Bol Bol, plus the usual training camp and two-way contract machinations that every team goes through, are the entirety of what they did.
Both of these matters, however, had an X factor at work behind the scenes.
Lyles was supposed to be the stretch power forward of choice, someone whom they were once so enamoured with that they traded Donovan Mitchell for both he and Lydon (in a brutally unsuccessful trade that they have somehow completely got away with).
Even after that did not work out, the Nuggets got very lucky in the incredibly deep draft of 2018 that Michael Porter Jr fell all the way down to them at No 14. And his continuous growth over the course of this season has seen Denver, once stagnating off the pace of the two Los Angeles teams in the chase for the Western Conference title, find an extra gear.
Porter fell down the draft in this way despite being a consensus top-five-overall talent due to a long-standing issue with his back that cost him all but three games of his college career. In the first half of his first game for the Missouri Tigers, Porter injured his back and came out of the game; two weeks later, he had a microdiscectomy, a serious and invasive procedure in which herniated material around spinal discs is removed.
He was not expected to return at all, and although he did come back to play limited minutes in the Tigers' final two games of the season in a desperate bid to bolster his NBA stock, in total, he managed merely 53 minutes as a college player.
The lack of game time in front of scouts plus entirely understandable concerns about the longevity of his back, combined with the fact that the 2018 NBA Draft pool was an extremely good one with many entirely legitimate alternative options available in the lottery, saw Porter fall all the way to 14 despite him once being thought of as potentially going as high as second.
And unlike most who pick in the lottery, with the Nuggets already a good team and thus much less urgent than the competition, they could afford to pick him and bench him for the entirety of his rookie season as they worked to improve the health and strength of the back.
Therein lay a big part of the reason for the Nuggets' continuity last summer. They knew they needed an upgrade on Lyles as a stretch power forward and spot starter, but they did not need to seek one from outside when they felt strongly that they would have one from within once Porter was able to play. And this confidence is being vindicated.
This season has been one of steady growth for Porter, who began on the outskirts of the rotation appearing in one game in October, playing 21 minutes in a blowout loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. After impressing in those minutes, he made his way into the back end of the rotation for the next seven games, yet still spent the month of November either at the very end of the rotation or still receiving "did not play - coach's decisions".
From December onwards, though, his playing time has continued to grow, to the point that he is now averaging 20.9 minutes in the month of January. And he is impressing significantly in them, too, averaging 12.6 points and 6.2 rebounds per game on a 53.6 FG%/48.8% 3PT%/77.3 FT% line, good for a .649% true shooting percentage.
In theory, Lyles was the spot-up shooter and cutter off the ball who would work very well as the deferential finisher alongside Jokic's passing prowess. He would stretch the court for the Serbian big man and also handle the ball in transition, a nice offensive complement even with his defensive limitations. And in his first season for Denver, that is what came to pass. But the always-passive Lyles also lost his shot last season, which when combined with the defensive limitations made him an overall net negative as a player. Porter, by contrast, fills much the same role but is much more offensively confident and aggressive, and his shooting stroke is too pure to ever disappear.
As a shooter, he ticks all the boxes. Porter is a tall player with good length and a high release, one that is suitably quick and repetitive. He mostly shoots off the catch, but his role in the NBA will grow to include more shooting off the dribble over time, something which the mechanics and early results suggest he will be able to do.
Not just a three-point shooter either, Porter also has a very nice touch from the mid-range areas, especially from the left side, and while there are made a few too many foot-on-the-line twos that could easily be threes at the moment, that is easily fixed long term. For now, as evidenced by the sweet overall 43.2 per cent that he is shooting from beyond the line in his first 37 NBA games, this part of his game is already in business.
He is not just shooting, either. Porter has been going to the offensive glass with regularity, shooting 54.8 per cent on the resultant put-backs, and when he is not just raising up for the jumpers, he is exhibiting some smart cuts off the ball and timely drives with the ball in his hand. These are not big areas of his game right now, but the more time spent alongside Jokic, the more they will become so.
Like most young players, Porter Jr will require a lot of work and reps on the defensive end. Still needing to improve how he handles the physicality of the NBA game and prone to sloppy fouls still, he has largely looked lost on this end, playing too far off of shooters and too far up on drivers, yielding too much space at times and often giving up and-ones.
The idea that he could be a big small forward, thus assuaging the greatest positional shortage the Nuggets face and allowing Will Barton to move to shooting guard, in turn alleviating the continued offensive struggles of Gary Harris, seems no more likely than when the same was said of Juancho Hernangomez prior.
Like everything about his game, though, Porter's defense has improved. The effort level has generally been there throughout the year, and the rotations are more timely and more accurate. Porter is still a poor defender at this stage and someone that opponents will continue to attack, but the Nuggets can spare one substandard positional defensive player - especially if they are coming off the bench - given the good strength of their overall team defense.
What they have sorely needed, given that they shoot only the 20th-best three-point percentage in the league on the sixth-fewest attempts, is some contributions from outside.
As a tall quick shooter who needs only a slither of space to get looks away, combined with nice athleticism, good offensive instincts, his unblockable release, an intriguing pull-up game, good footwork and soft touch on hook shots and floaters around the basket, Porter is giving them that.
And as far as we have heard, his back has not been a problem again, either.
Denver needed an infusion of something as their peers out West continue to make big strides, and after a slow first 18 months, Porter is now offering it.
