How Michael Porter Jr. took a different kind of star turn with the Nets

Michael Porter Jr. threw a sweet jump pass last week. After a handoff from Day'Ron Sharpe, the Brooklyn Nets forward left his feet, feigned a crosscourt pass and dropped a dime to Danny Wolf on the wing for an open 3. It was the prettiest of Porter's six assists in the game, and that number isn't all that unusual anymore. He's had 10 games of at least five assists this season, which is more than he had in his entire pre-Nets career.

For six seasons with the Denver Nuggets, Porter's job was to finish plays. He found easy baskets by cutting off of Nikola Jokić, and he amplified Jokić and Jamal Murray's two-man game with his deadeye shooting. Porter could make the extra pass to an open teammate, but, playing that role, he wasn't going to pick up more than an assist or two per night.

"When I got the ball, it was time to get a bucket," Porter said.

Almost everything is different in Brooklyn. Porter is still getting buckets -- he's averaging a career-high 25.9 points per game and is 10th in the league in points per possession -- but, rather than capitalizing off of the attention drawn by star teammates, he is the name at the top of the opponent's scouting report. Increasingly, he is the guy who's supposed to generate advantages and easy scoring chances for everybody else.

"Now, here, having the ball in my hands a lot more, a lot more actions drawn up for me, there's more opportunity for me to either shoot or pass and get assists, and we have guys that can knock down shots," Porter said. "So yeah, it's definitely something that's not surprising to me, but I guess it surprises a lot of other people."

Porter is "the engine of our offense," Nets center Nic Claxton said. Despite a massive increase in usage, he has remained extraordinarily efficient. He's driving about twice as often as he did in Denver and earning about twice as many free-throw attempts. Opponents try to run him off the 3-point line, but he's still getting up 9.4 attempts per game and making 40.4% of them. This breakout season should earn him his first All-Star appearance. For all of the responsibility he has, though, he's not a conventional No. 1 option. Brooklyn hasn't turned him into a high-volume pick-and-roll guy or isolation scorer.

"When he came in, I was like, 'Hey, Mike, maybe I'll throw some isos for you,' and he was so excited," Nets coach Jordi Fernández said. "And then the season started, and I don't iso him."

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Fernández has instead unleashed Porter as one of the league's premier off-ball threats. Brooklyn runs Porter off all kinds of screens because opponents are rightfully terrified of him getting open. "Being able to set him up for even half a second, less than half a second, for him to just pull it up, that's all he needs," Nets guard Egor Dëmin said. Porter has made 19 more tightly contested 3s than anybody else in the NBA, and he ranks fifth in the league in off-ball gravity on the perimeter. The coaching staff wants to weaponize his jumper as much as possible while emphasizing ball movement and player movement.

The 11-26 Nets have lost all seven games that Porter has missed. They've had the equivalent of a top-10 offense (117.1 points per 100 possessions, per Cleaning The Glass) with him on the court and an abysmal one (105.3 per 100) without him. After they acquired him and a 2031 first-round pick for Cam Johnson last summer, he has played his way back into the rumor mill -- in theory, Sean Marks' front office could stack a win on top of a win by flipping him to a contender. Unless the team gets a humongous haul, though, Brooklyn should be more than happy to keep Porter. Moving him would make it harder for the Nets to take the step that they want to take next season (when they won't own their own draft pick). He's the type of offensive player who can complement anybody they might acquire, and it's hard to overstate what he means to the current iteration of the team.

"The ball has energy, and the way we're playing right now, for the most part, a lot of different guys are touching the ball and it's not sticking," Porter said. "When I'm catching it, I'm trying to make quick decisions -- shoot, drive or pass -- and keep the ball moving. And I think, especially for our young guys, it's giving everybody confidence as the ball's moving to make quick decisions, let it fly or make a play."

An average Porter touch is shorter and features fewer dribbles than an average Klay Thompson touch. Outside of the Jazz's Lauri Markkanen, no prolific scorer is putting up points in a remotely similar way. Sometimes, Porter's movement benefits Brooklyn without him ever touching the ball. In a recent game, when the Magic's Anthony Black top-locked him (i.e. prevented him from using a screen), a hard cut to the basket forced a rotation, opening up a skip pass from Dëmin to Ziaire Williams for an open 3. Williams missed the shot, but "those little things are priceless when you're running a system like this," Fernández said. 

"I know that my cuts and my off-ball movement create gravity," Porter said. "So if I don't get the shot but Noah Clowney does, he can knock it down; if I don't get the shot but Egor does -- we've got so many capable guys that I have no problem giving myself up and letting them get the shot."

Porter and Claxton have developed excellent dribble-handoff chemistry. Dëmin said playing with Porter has been "awesome," especially because it has been an opportunity "to learn from somebody how to play without the ball." There were some hiccups early on -- the Nets turned the ball over 37 times in their first two games -- but, "we kind of just, over the course of the season, figured out what worked for our group," Porter said.

In making the case for Porter to be an All-Star, Fernández pointed not just to his numbers but his "impact to competitiveness." Largely thanks to Porter, the Nets have generally been a better watch than their record suggests. This is a young, but unselfish and physical team with an offense built around one of the best shotmakers in the game. Porter described Fernández as "very innovative," and he's excited about what Brooklyn is building. If it's up to him, he'll continue to be a big part of it.

"We're enjoying playing with each other," Porter said. "I'm having fun, the team's having fun. It's good vibes around here."