Why Cam Johnson has not been able to fill Michael Porter Jr.'s shoes for the Nuggets
It's fair to wonder if the Nuggets regret making a trade that got a near-universal approval rating last summer
When the Denver Nuggets swapped out Michael Porter Jr. for Cameron Johnson last summer in a trade with the Brooklyn Nets, it was one of those trades that garnered a near-universal approval rating. Everyone loved that deal for the Nuggets, who accomplished many things with the trade.
For starters, they trimmed their payroll considerably with Johnson making nearly half as much as Porter over the next two seasons. With more financial flexibility, they were able to add a lot of the depth they'd long been missing, namely in the form of Jonas Valanciunas, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Bruce Brown.
So it wasn't just a Porter-for-Johnson swap.
But that's the way it felt because those two guys are very similar players. It felt like the Nuggets were adding something close to a Porter Jr. clone at a fraction of the price. Many people believed Johnson was a better player than Porter, or at the very least his equal. It seemed like home run deal for the Nuggets in every sense.
Fast forward eight months, and the perception of this trade has largely flipped. As Porter has turned into one of the league's best and most efficient scorers in Brooklyn, Johnson has been painted as something of a bust for the Nuggets.
This isn't necessarily true. Johnson, albeit on much lower volume than last year in Brooklyn when he had the best season of his career, is shooting 40% from 3 this year. Over 23 games across November and December he shot 45% from deep, and the Nuggets went 17-6 with him in the lineup over that stretch. All told, Denver has won Johnson's minutes by 7.4 points per 100 possessions this season, per Cleaning the Glass.
Drilling down, Denver's optimal starting lineup of Jamal Murray, Christian Braun, Johnson, Aaron Gordon and Nikola Jokić, which we haven't seen a ton (Jokić, Braun and Gordon have all missed significant time), has blitzed opponents by 16.7 points per 100 with a 97th percentile offense, per CTG.
Yes, Jokić and Murray cover for a lot and a lot of Johnson's minutes are alongside those two, and his scoring is way down from last season, but that's largely attributable to playing on a team with two world-class scorers and his field-goal attempts falling by nearly five per game.
Johnson could be more aggressive. Has hasn't looked confident for large chunks of the season, and that can possibly be traced to the heightened stakes of being expected to perform for a contender. Or maybe that has nothing to do with it. Either way, it's not as though Johnson is killing the Nuggets on paper. They have the No. 1 offense in the league for crying out loud.
But again, the eye test has, at times, told a bit of a different story. Johnson has missed a lot of shots in big spots. Shots that feel like the ones he was brought in to make. Shots Porter Jr. has been cashing all season with the Nets and did so many times for the Nuggets.
Johnson is in a particularly rough stretch at the moment. He's missed 14 of his last 18 3-pointers, including this potential game-winner against OKC.
A week before that he made just one shot against the Warriors and missed all three of his fourth-quarter 3s, including two straight on this late trip when the Nuggets were trying to mount a rally.
On Sunday, Johnson was held scoreless in a loss to Minnesota. After that game, he appeared to be nearly in tears as talked about his struggle to remain confident when he feels like he keeps, in his eyes, letting himself and his teammates down with what he described as his "severe lack of contribution."
Cam Johnson is a professional athlete. He makes millions. He’s also human.
— Vic Lombardi (@VicLombardi) March 2, 2026
And humans sometimes doubt themselves.
No matter how accomplished you are, human frailties can bubble to the surface. Happens to ALL of us. Listen to Cam’s postgame interview last night. @nuggets pic.twitter.com/pIprFfxUww
That is about as vulnerable as you'll see a professional athlete. Credit to Johnson for the honesty and, though he's probably being too hard on himself, no-punches accountability. He hasn't been as bad this season as the discourse around him would suggest, but he probably does need to provide the Nuggets with more juice than his current 11.2 PPG.
Last season, operating in the same role, Porter Jr. gave them 18.2 PPG on the same 40% 3-point shooting at higher volume. Besides the averages, there was a higher upside with Porter -- who could, and did, take over many games for the Nuggets for stretches. Last season, he scored at least 20 points 29 times.
Johnson, meanwhile, has scored 20 points three times this year, and he has been held to single digits in 43% of his games (16 out of 37). Compare that to Porter, who was only held to single-digits six times in 77 games last season, and it doesn't look good for Johnson.
He obviously feels that weight. He knows that the Nuggets, who have managed just one win in the last seven weeks over a plus-.500 team, need him to be closer to the player Porter was, closer to the player that Denver thought it was getting, if the Nuggets are going to get back on a contender track.
Let's reiterate that trade wasn't just a Johnson-for-Porter swap. The Nuggets got more out of the flexibility they created, and one of those players, Hardaway Jr., can -- and to a large degree has -- share the X-factor shooter role with Johnson.
But you do have to wonder, even considering the tax penalties they avoided and the depth they were able to add, if the Nuggets would do that trade again today if they had a chance at a do-over. That's a hard question to answer given all the layers at play (Denver also had to give up a 2032 first-round pick, which could end up being damn valuable in potentially post-Jokić years), but it wasn't supposed to be a question at all when the trade went down.
