Trae Young the latest to take bold stance on Michael Porter Jr. for this season

There have already been more than enough ridiculous offseason comments made either by or about Michael Porter Jr. this offseason. Most of them have been harmless silliness, some have been a bit eye-opening, and some have been downright offensive. 

But thankfully, this one actually has to do with basketball as Trae Young and MPJ were sharing a workout on camera recently, with Young predicting that Porter Jr. will average more than 25 points per game this season.

Mike started the exchange by talking about how the friends were each trying to get better, with Young aiming to get back to the All-Star Game, and him looking to make it for the first time. Young chimed in, “You’re averaging 25 plus this year”, and when asked to repeat himself, he said, “Come on, man, 25.. 25 plus easy.”

Porter Jr. primed to have a career year statistically

Normally, this could probably be written off as nothing more than a couple of players hyping each other up, but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard talk like this. Earlier this offseason, at summer league, a Nets executive told Keith Smith of Spotrac that he believed MPJ could actually lead the NBA in scoring.

This buzz around Porter Jr. having a breakout year makes sense for a few reasons. For one, he’s leaving a Nuggets team where he was a third or fourth option, at best, surrounded by superstars who commanded the ball. He had a defined role that mostly relegated him to floor spacing.

In Brooklyn, things will be completely different. He enters an extremely young and unproven team filled with young point guards. Other than the currently unsigned Cam Thomas, the team has no clear scoring option, and MPJ may be the go-to guy, commanding as many shots as he desires on any given night.

They won’t be competing to win, and they’ll need someone to get buckets and show some of the young guys how it’s done. Mike should be perfect for that role, and there will likely be some nights where he gets hot and puts on a show.

On top of that, he’ll now be playing in the far-weaker Eastern Conference, which will be missing several injured stars. There are going to be a number of first-time All-Stars this season in the East by default, so it stands to reason that if Mike can put up monster stats on a bad Nets team, he’ll have a real chance of making it.

This is still an extreme long shot

On the other hand, we’re talking about a guy who has never averaged more than 19 points per game, which he did five seasons ago. He hasn’t improved his game much, shown any ability to create shots for himself or others, or get to the basket. Meanwhile, he had Nikola Jokic spoon-feeding him perfect catch-and-shoot looks regularly.

Color me more than a little skeptical that this opportunity to have the ball more is suddenly going to make him into a better player. Like I said earlier, I’m sure he’ll get plenty of shots off, and there might be some gaudy stats on some nights.

But I don’t see it translating into consistent production. The efficiency is almost certainly going to dip, and there’s a chance that the increased usage is disastrous. Ultimately, he likely settles into a similar role that he played in Denver, playing off of the many new Nets guards, being one of their main play-finishers, and putting up similar numbers on higher volume but lower efficiency.