An NBA champion has expressed that he was shocked to be traded by the Denver Nuggets this off-season, but also feels that he “let the team down” with his performances in the post-season.
A disappointing regular season left the Denver Nuggets fourth in the Western Conference with a 50-32 record. They pushed the NBA champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder, hard in the second round, losing in seven games, but the goal is championships for a Nikola Jokic-led team.
The Nuggets had to retool in the summer to bring themselves back into title contention. Denver had an incredible off-season, bringing in Cam Johnson, who had a breakout season with the Brooklyn Nets, as well as Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr. to add some serious depth to the bench.
But as players are traded for, others are traded away, and this NBA champion with the Nuggets felt the impact of that.
Michael Porter Jr. says he was ‘shocked’ when he was traded from the Denver Nuggets
Michael Porter Jr., who played a pivotal role in the Nuggets’ 2023 title, was the player sent to Brooklyn in return for Johnson.
He had a disappointing post-season, putting up nine points per game on less than 40% field goal shooting, but suffered from a shoulder injury on the back end of the year, which hampered his performance.
Porter Jr is set to make $80 million over the next two seasons, and it was important for the Nuggets to move off that contract for salary flexibility. But after speaking with newly appointed General Manager Jon Wallace, the news came as a surprise to him.
He said to Brooklyn Nets beat reporter Erik Slater, “My first thought was shock. Two days prior, I was walking around my home in Denver, and I ran into Jon Wallace.
“We sat down and we talked for a while and he told me how he’s going to build the team, who he wants to surround us with and who he wants in the second unit. He wanted to find a point guard who can feed me the ball in the second unit, all this stuff.
“It got me really excited, but I also think he heard in my voice that I wanted to grow my game. I didn’t want to plateau; I wanted to keep getting better throughout my career.”
Porter Jr. admitted that he felt he had reached the limit of his potential in Denver, but he didn’t express that to Wallace at the time. That left him surprised when he heard he was moving to Brooklyn.
He continued, “From that conversation, I thought, ‘We’re going to make some changes, we’re going to move some things around, I’m going to feel more comfortable next year coming in with the second unit. I was excited for it.
“So when I got the text from Jon Wallace and my agent, I was shocked. But at the end of the day, that’s the NBA, and I have no hard feelings.”
That’s a mature response from Porter Jr., who understands that when you have one of the NBA’s all-time greats on your team, you cannot go a couple of seasons without winning the title and not make changes.
If they didn’t make moves, Jokic said he might leave the Nuggets.
But unfortunately, he has regrets about how it ended in Denver.
Michael Porter Jr. felt like he ‘let the team down’, but was playing ‘on one shoulder’ in the playoffs
It didn’t end the way Porter Jr. would have liked in Denver. If he had played to his usual standard, they may have overcome the Thunder in the second round, and who knows what that team would have gone on to do.
But he was severely hampered by a Grade 2 sprain in his shoulder, and it was impressive that he was even able to get out on the court.
Porter Jr. still holds regrets, however, saying, “It was tough because I wasn’t able to play the way I wanted to play in the playoffs because of my shoulder.
“I was severely limited with what I could do in the playoffs. That was the taste I left with the Nuggets fans and organisation. I really felt like I let the team down this past playoffs.
“I went out and tried, but I was playing with one arm. My whole shoulder was popped out and torn, I was putting a needle in it every day, trying to get the pain down, but regardless, I went out there and tried to play after the shoulder injury, and I wasn’t able to be myself and wasn’t able to help the team.
“That hurts. That’s how my journey with the Nuggets ended.”
It was an open and honest interview by Porter, who had clearly done a lot of self-reflection since the end of the season. He is now presented with a perfect opportunity to grow and develop as a player, and hopefully, with time, his regret from last post-season will subside.