It’s going to be a while before we get to see the Michael Porter Jr. we want to see. The Nuggets have plans. They have aspirations. They want to win games, and they won tons of games without him last year. A young stud scorer is a luxury they have, but don’t exactly need. They can brush him off when they want to, and stick him on the bench (the more usual outcome) when they want to. Their success does not ride on Porter’s shoulders.
I guess it’s “helping” his “development” or whatever to have him sit on the bench for most of the game, and even I can admit that the Nuggets would have fewer wins if they just unleashed him and let him do whatever he wanted on the court for as long as he wanted. But come on, it would be so FUN to just have him be the offensive force we know he can be. The Nuggets are a great team, but aside from whatever antics Nikola Jokic gets up to, they are a bit lacking in the “fun” department.
Imagine if Porter was on a bad team right now. He’d be chucking SO MANY shots, and there’d be no reason to tell him not to. It would be great. He wouldn’t get to win as often, but what good is a win when you’re normally playing only a small part in it? A true win is when you score 50 points for the Hornets to lead your team to a one-point victory over another horrible team.
We did get a bit of a taste of Porter’s future 50-point scoring performances, when he scored 17 in the span of about 8 minutes spanning the first and second quarters. He only managed two free throws the whole rest of the game, but for those few minutes, it was pure scoring bliss.