Coach Mike Malone of the Nuggets recently stated his intentions to give Michael Porter Jr. minutes in every Nuggets game from now on, and the implication was that the given minutes wouldn’t just be a token three minutes and change at the end of a blowout, or fifteen seconds at the end of the first half. The minutes given would be REAL minutes during REALLY CONTESTED games. In Malone’s words, MPJ had played too well to be trapped on the bench.
So far, Malone has held to his promise, and MPJ has been getting around twenty minutes per game as of late. I was a little bit skeptical when I heard Malone’s words (many coaches have made similar promises which have been broken quickly [Doc Rivers vs. Boban Marjanovic comes to mind]), but, then again, Malone would have to be a true moron to not see what he has with MPJ. There would be a literal fan revolt if MPJ was stuck on the bench, because MPJ isn’t just some meme player that fans support ironically. He’s an emerging scoring beast who has already had some big games and will continue to have big games as long as he keeps getting big minutes.
Don’t even come at me with MPJ’s troubling injury history and probable injury future. I don’t want to hear it. I want to sit here and pretend that he’s totally healthy with no red flags at all. Sort of like how my knees hurt like hell every time I play basketball but I just pretend that they’re sore because of the nature of basketball and not because I have degenerative old man knees even though I’m not even thirty yet god damn it.