Michael Porter Jr. could bare­ly con­tain the smile, as if he sur­prised even himself.

Four min­utes into a nation­al TV broad­cast — the same net­work where Porter went through an untime­ly (if ulti­mate­ly irrel­e­vant) shoot­ing slump in the NBA Finals last year — Porter was cleared for take-off. It was last Fri­day night against the Pel­i­cans. Porter received a pass from Jamal Mur­ray on the right wing, drove to his left around Bran­don Ingram and ascend­ed around Jonas Valan­ci­u­nas’ chal­lenge at the rim.

“He attacked a close-out and had one of the best dunks I’ve ever seen him have wear­ing a Nuggets uni­form: in traf­fic, on peo­ple,” Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one said Sun­day after Den­ver won its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive game, 117–109, over the Pacers.

Why was the dunk still on Malone’s mind 48 hours lat­er? Because he doesn’t think those feats of ath­leti­cism from Porter should be tak­en for grant­ed in Denver.

“I don’t think he gets the cred­it he deserves,” Mal­one said Sun­day after Porter scored 25 points on 7‑of-11 shoot­ing from 3‑point range. “What he’s doing has nev­er been done before, from a med­ical stand­point. If you’re real­ly gonna under­stand and look at what he’s doing, from a med­ical stand­point, the brace he wears every night and for him to go out and do what he’s doing — if you just take a step back, it’s just incredible.”

The brace Porter wears on his left leg every game is a byprod­uct of three back surg­eries that have slowed him down through­out his career. Mal­one has been abun­dant­ly tough on Porter before, par­tic­u­lar­ly over his defense, but when he has games like these or dunks like those, the ninth-year Nuggets coach takes a step back and mar­vels at MPJ’s resilience.

“I’ve got­ta remind myself of that,” Mal­one said. “Because no one else has done what he’s doing, and I real­ly admire that.”

The 6‑foot-10 Porter con­tin­ues to shoot the three around 40% this sea­son. He’s also aver­ag­ing 1.7 more rebounds than he did in 2022–23, while remain­ing the only Nuggets starter to appear in every game of the first half of the season.

“That’s the biggest goal for me, con­sid­er­ing all I’ve been through,” he said. “More than good games, bad games, it’s being able to play in the games. Oth­er than that, every­one has good games and bad games. But for me, con­sid­er­ing what I’ve been through, I think health and just avail­abil­i­ty is the thing I can be (most) proud of.”

As the Nuggets (28–13) pre­pare for a daunt­ing five-game road trip, Porter has scored 20 in back-to-back games while tack­ing on a sea­son-high five assists in the win over Indi­ana. Two nights ear­li­er against New Orleans, he sup­ple­ment­ed his poster dunk with one of the finest assists of his career, an under­hand scoop out­let pass that trav­eled the length of the floor over New Orleans defend­ers and into the wait­ing arms of Niko­la Jokic.

Mal­one said he tries to be in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his high-usage play­ers through­out the sea­son to check on how they’re feel­ing phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly. That goal applies even more to Porter, and it applied even more dur­ing the bru­tal stretch of back-to-backs between Decem­ber and ear­ly January.

“That’s not just a con­ver­sa­tion with Michael, but also our train­ing staff,” Mal­one said. “Steve Short, who’s the direc­tor of our sports sci­ence team, mak­ing sure that he’s in a good place.”

The con­sis­ten­cy of Porter’s pres­ence on the floor has allowed his offen­sive game to devel­op more than usu­al by this point in the sea­son. Though he’s nev­er been a strong ball-han­dler, he’s rec­og­niz­ing and attack­ing close-outs off the bounce more. He has also tak­en to pass­ing the ball out of his shoot­ing form in mid-air when he sens­es the close-out is going to affect his 3‑pointer, a maneu­ver that isn’t prac­ticed away from games so much as it is refined by neces­si­ty in the moment.

“If I jump and I feel like a guy is gonna get a pret­ty good con­test and I don’t want to shoot that con­test­ed of a shot, I’ll just pass it,” Porter said. “And I know that right when I land, I can cut and catch him by surprise.”

It back­fired once Sun­day when Jokic antic­i­pat­ed a cut and threw the ball to nobody; Porter had stayed in place. But when they’re on the same page — usu­al­ly Jokic and all of his team­mates are — it works for some of Porter’s clean­est 2‑point looks.

“He’s gonna draw a crowd. Peo­ple game-plan for Michael Porter Jr.,” Mal­one said. “And they run him off the line. … Con­tin­ue to under­stand how impor­tant it is for him to pass and cut. Because his man is always gonna relax. And he’s so big, and Nikola’s going to find him every time.”

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