My thing with basketball players is that I only realize they exist if they’re currently playing in the NBA. If they’re sidelined by injuries, or are in the G-League, or are playing overseas, or are retired, or are playing in college, or are doing anything other than regularly appearing in NBA-sanctioned sporting contests, then I’m not going to even remember that they’re there.
That’s what happened with Michael Porter Jr. Since I don’t pay attention to high school players, and he didn’t have a notable college career, I only heard about him once he got drafted. And then I forgot about him again, because it turns out that the most important structures of his back are made out of pieces of your great-grandmas delicate, 100-year-old glassware. He wasn’t appearing in games, the Nuggets weren’t really counting on his services, so the only times I thought of him last season were when somebody would run an article titled “It looks like Michael Porter Jr. is still injured”.
With his official NBA debut in the books (and not a bad one at that), I can officially start devoting brain-time to this guy. With his ability to play real-life basketball in the real-life NBA comes a chance for him to affect the fortunes of the Nuggets. Will he actually affect those fortunes in a positive way? Judging by this debut, where he led all Nuggets in scoring and got more minutes than Paul Millsap, I would answer “yes”. Not an emphatic yes, but not a tentative yes either. Just a solid yes.