Denver Nuggets: The biggest risk in Michael Porter Jr.’s extension

The Denver Nuggets have given Michael Porter Jr. his maximum extension, keeping him in Colorado for another five years on top of the final year of his rookie-scale deal next season.

It’s a completely fair contract to pay a 23-year-old rising star in the league, especially with the scoring opportunities he’ll be gifted next season.

The deal can be worth up to $207 million across five seasons if he makes the designated max criteria: making an All-NBA team. If he isn’t on an All-NBA team, then the number drops to five years, $172 million – still a large contract, but saving the Denver Nuggets $35 million across the life of the deal.

It’s the same contract signed by 2018 draft peers in Luka Doncic, Trae Young, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The first two on that list will almost definitely be All-NBA players in the lifespan of this contract and SGA is likely dependent on health and team success.

Shams Charania and Sam Amick of The Athletic added to the news, reporting that only $12 million of the $39.9 million in year five of the deal is guaranteed. Porter Jr. can make the full amount based on All-Stars, MVPs, DPOYs, All-NBA, and All-Defensive honors.

Assuming he doesn’t reach any of those milestones (the most attainable being an All-Star), the deal falls to a five-year, $145.3 million deal. Still a huge amount but more palatable for team salary reasons.

MPJ is coming off an excellent 2020-21 season where he averaged 19 points a game while shooting 54 percent from the floor and 45 percent from behind the arc, taking 6.3 triples a night. After the Jamal Murray injury, Michael Porter Jr. averaged 22.8 points a night, taking on the role as the second option behind Nikola Jokic.

It’s hard to see, even if he extrapolates those post-Jamal Murray numbers across an entire season, that he beats out the mainstay wings on the All-NBA teams. Even with Kawhi Leonard’s knee injury and likely exclusion, MPJ would have to leapfrog names like LeBron James, Julius Randle, Jimmy Butler, and Paul George (the second and third All-NBA forwards last season).

But the risk isn’t betting on a young scorer like Michael Porter Jr., the risk is the lack of injury protections.

One month ago, I thought that the delay in an extension was because both parties were negotiating some injury protections or exclusions in the deal. As Bobby Marks, ESPN wrote before free agency, the Denver Nuggets might be hesitant to offer the full maximum extension without including any injury protections.

Marks compares the MPJ extension to that of Joel Embiid’s rookie deal, another case where the player missed an entire season or more with a serious injury. In Embiid’s case, it was it foot and back while in Michael Porter Jr.’s case it was a back injury that kept him out for his entire rookie season.

It was this exact back injury that saw him fall in the 2018 NBA draft. The former Missouri player was supposed to be shaking Adam Silver’s hand much earlier than 14th but the teams ahead of Denver didn’t want to risk drafting a player who might never be at full strength again.

As MPJ detailed in a recent episode of J.J. Redick’s The Old Man and Three podcast, one LA Clippers doctor said Porter Jr. will never play basketball again, misdiagnosing him.

After missing his entire rookie season, MPJ debuted for the Nuggets at full strength and hasn’t looked back until the second-round series against the Phoenix Suns. Against the Suns, MPJ “tweaked” his back and wasn’t at full strength, playing and scoring less than he typically does.

As of today, we haven’t heard anything about injury protections in Michael Porter Jr.’s contract. The All-NBA/All-Star teams are a standard incentive for many players in their contracts, big or small, but it’s especially common to include injury or games played incentives for players with an injury history.

There’s a world in which Michael Porter Jr. never has a back injury for the rest of his career, plays out the contract and more and everyone’s happy at the end of the day. But what if the “tweak” against Phoenix lingers or perhaps he just simply re-injures his back and misses a substantial amount of time.

Teams can sometimes negotiate clauses that limit the amount of money based on the games played or if the player re-aggravates a specific injury. If MPJ does miss time, he’s much less likely to make an All-Star team, cutting down on his guarantee, but it might’ve been more prudent for Tim Connelly to include injury-specific protection.

But at the end of the day, regardless of what protections there were in the deal, offering this amount of money to any player is a risk, anything could happen. Jamal Murray was an Ironman in the NBA, missing nearly no time at all until he tore his ACL against the Golden State Warriors.

Offering max contracts is a risk, but the upside is high enough with MPJ to take that risk.

He’s now being paid in the same neighbourhood of Brandon Ingram, Gordon Hayward, and Andrew Wiggins. I’d much rather the younger MPJ over all of those players.

For all the downside risk the Denver Nuggets are taking with this deal, there’s equally as much upside. At only 23-years-old, MPJ could take another leap with his scoring and truly take the reigns as the second option in this upcoming season. I can’t wait to watch it happen.