Michael Porter Jr. is still just getting acclimated to his new home in Brooklyn, but he’s already turning heads and getting people excited. Keith Smith emptied the clip with his summer league notes for Spotrac, and when it came to the Nets, he noted that one exec told him in regards to Porter Jr., “I’m not saying he’ll win the scoring title, but I think it could be close”.
This Nets front office executive was talking about how they have such a young team in Brooklyn, and they’re going to need veterans to step up and provide scoring, specifically. They think Mike can help in a big way.
Porter Jr. averaged 19 points per game in his second NBA season, which had many projecting him as a true star in the making. But he had another injury setback and hasn’t reached those scoring heights ever since. He put up 18.2 a game last season, 16.7 the season before, and 17.4 the year before that.
Those are solid numbers, but he seems to have plateaued, at least in Denver. Players usually don’t have another big leap in them once they are 27 years old, but given the drastic change of situation, there is definitely some hope for a big scoring leap from Mike in Brooklyn.
MPJ has opportunity to be Nets’ go-to guy
Even at his best, MPJ was never going to be more than a third option as long as Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray were on the Nuggets. In every season where he played at least 50 games, he has averaged between 13.2 and 13.6 field goal attempts per game. His role was extremely defined and controlled.
But now he goes to a Nets team that is amidst a rebuild. They just selected five rookies in the first round of the draft and will have one of the youngest teams in the league. Nic Claxton and Terance Mann are there, but they aren’t big scoring threats. It’s going to be Cam Thomas and Porter Jr. putting the ball in the basket on a nightly basis, and that may be it.
On top of that, Thomas still has to work out his restricted free agency situation and who knows where he’ll be on opening night. Porter Jr. is going to play a lot, and he’s going to get to run the offense and find his own shots. He will have the chance to get up as many shots as he wants, and 20+ a game doesn’t seem out of the question.
Maybe he won’t actually lead the league in scoring, but the fact that it’s being talked about shows how much bigger his role will be. I’m not sure it’ll lead to winning, and I’m not sure it would have helped the Nuggets, but I’m excited to see how it looks and happy for Mike.