Realistic expectations for Michael Porter Jr.: Right back into form
After essentially missing an entire season, there’s a world in which MPJ comes right back as the player he was. If he had played the entirety of the 2021-22 season, MPJ would’ve just finished two of the fastest seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Nikola Jokic hasn’t slowed down, in fact, he has won back-to-back MVPs, a player like Michael Porter Jr. without the same conditioning as the Big Honey could do with the rest.
Porter Jr. was in line to average 20-plus points this past season and by adding 3-and-D role players around him, he’ll have the opportunity to do the same in 2022-23.
At the start of this past season, Michael Malone was staggering MPJ and Jokic’s minutes, ensuring there’s at least one elite creator on the court at all times. Assuming he does the same next season, there may be bench combinations where Porter is the lone scorer on the court, buffing up his counting stats.
Whenever I think about MPJ’s potential, I always think back to an article by Rob Mahoney, The Ringer that featured this quote from Markus Howard:
"“The scary thing is: He’s not even 100 percent. That’s the thing that blows my mind. He was playing last year and had a historic season, and he was a shell of what he really is.”"
If 19 points per game on extreme efficiency is a “shell”, I can’t wait to see what the best-case scenario is.