“They Always Thought They Could Beat Us”: Michael Porter Jr. Recalls Nuggets’ Playoff Battles vs LeBron James and Lakers

Michael Porter Jr. has been one of the main characters of this NBA offseason. The sharp-shooting forward was traded from the Nuggets to the Nets in June. Since then, he has been on an epic run of delivering wild quote after wild quote, from topics as far-reaching as his brother Jontay’s gambling scandal to Nikola Jokic giving him advice for safe sex in Brooklyn.

Lost in all of these viral quotes is the fact that Porter will now be on a rebuilding team for the first time in his career. Since his rookie season in 2019-20 (he was drafted in 2018 but missed the entire year due to injury), he’s been to the playoffs every year. That’s what happens when you get to play with Nikola Jokic.

Porter was able to play a complementary role on those Nuggets teams, but the Nets are counting on him to do even bigger and better things for them. The Eastern Conference is much weaker than the West, but the Nets still have a long way to go to put together a competitive roster, so we’ll see how that goes.

Porter continued his recent run of podcast appearances by meeting up with Johnny Manziel on his Glory Daze podcast. The episode premiered yesterday, and in it, Porter reminisced about what it was like to be part of those Nuggets playoff runs and how it felt to keep running into LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in the postseason.

“I used to love those series against the Lakers with Denver, because they were very exciting,” Porter said. “The Lakers fanbase is crazy, and they always thought they could beat us, but they never did.”

“I always had good series against the Lakers, so I loved playing against them,” Porter continued. “I don’t know what it was, but I always cooked the Lakers. I just think that they didn’t really have a matchup for me that was trying to come off of screens and things like that, and I was able to get to my shots. Some of the other teams we played down the road, they kind of had a little bit better matchup for me.”

Porter has faced the Lakers three times in the playoffs. The first time was in 2020, when the LA team knocked Denver out on their way to winning the bubble title. More recently, it’s been all Nuggets. Denver dispatched L.A. with a four-game sweep in the 2023 Western Conference Finals en route to their first championship in franchise history.

One year later, the Nuggets handed the Lakers a gentleman’s sweep in the first round and Porter had a lot to do with it. While he was slightly below his regular season averages the first two times he met the Lakers in the postseason, in this series he went off, averaging 23.8 points per game.

Lakers fans have come to dread being matched up with the Nuggets, because like most teams, they’ve been powerless to stop Jokic. Even with Porter gone, that’s unlikely to change, as Denver has fortified the roster with Cam Johnson, Bruce Brown (a member of the 2023 title team) and others. Jamal Murray has hit clutch shot after clutch shot against L.A. in the playoffs, and he’s still there, too.

Porter remembers his time in Denver fondly, but being sent to Brooklyn gives him the opportunity to prove that he can be one of the top dogs on a contending team. As he said in a recently-posted workout video alongside Trae Young, “He trying to get back to the All-Star game, I’m trying to be my first time All-Star.” 

If Porter can fulfil that lofty goal and make his first All-Star team, then maybe the Nets will surprise some people this season.