Michael Porter Jr. has never exactly built a reputation as the guy who’s itching to move the ball along. The Brooklyn Nets forward has long been tagged as a scorer first, passer second, and the nickname “Michael "Never Swing the Rock" Porter Jr.” has followed him for a reason.
Porter, though, has his own explanation for why he played that way during his Denver Nuggets years.
A career 39.8 percent 3-point shooter, Porter has done plenty to justify a green light from deep. He’s taking 6.4 threes per game, and he’s knocking them down at a clip that makes the lack of extra passes easier to live with. When he does get the ball, he usually fires with confidence.
He’s also clearly aware of how teammates have viewed that tendency. Even former Nuggets teammate Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has said on record that he doesn’t expect the ball if Porter has it.
Porter pushed back on the idea that he was simply ignoring open teammates. His view is that the game looked different from his perspective than it did on film.
"In the game, I'm telling you, it feels open, but I'm looking back in the film like that swing, we would've had a better one. Everything feels open to me; I'm over the top with a (high) release point," Porter said in response to KCP's claims.
He also pointed to the Nuggets’ setup as part of the reason he stayed in his scoring lane.
"Over there in that system, we had the best player in the world who touches the ball in every position; we had Jamal, who's very dominant, a guard who likes to score the ball... When it comes to my way, it's not time to keep playmaking."
That logic fits the role Denver needed from him. With Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray handling the creation, Porter’s job was to space the floor and let it fly. He did that.
And while the extra pass might have helped now and then, the approach still ended with a championship in 2023.
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