At least Michael Porter Jr. got it over with early.

Unavoid­able for every rook­ie, par­tic­u­lar­ly one who just had a com­ing out par­ty in the NBA bub­ble, the play­off indoc­tri­na­tion was coming.

Late in the first quar­ter of the Nuggets’ thrilling Game 1 vic­to­ry over Utah on Mon­day, Porter tried to bee­line to the bas­ket when Joe Ingles of the Jazz saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty. He stepped in front of Porter, took a fore­arm to the back of the head and sold the foul like a three-time Oscar winner.

Wel­come to the play­offs, rook. Bet­ter luck in Wednesday’s Game 2.

Unlike most rook­ies, Porter didn’t show any nerves in his play­off debut. He con­fi­dent­ly strode into two ear­ly tran­si­tion 3‑pointers and even elicit­ed a com­par­i­son to Kevin Durant by ESPN broad­cast­er Doris Burke. Porter’s debut – 13 points and eight rebounds in 31 min­utes – was more promis­ing than not.

But he did learn some hard truths. Eager to exploit any Nuggets weak­ness, the Jazz start­ed pick­ing on Porter on defense and tried to get under his skin on offense. Until he can prove his will­ing­ness to fight over screens or defend small­er play­ers on the perime­ter, it’s a strat­e­gy Utah will con­tin­ue to employ.

“In the play­offs, it’s all about defense,” said Porter, evi­dent­ly a quick study. “The defen­sive inten­si­ty is way up. So being locked in every pos­ses­sion and real­ly real­iz­ing every pos­ses­sion mat­ters (is important).”

Porter’s oth­er real­iza­tion: The easy bas­kets he enjoyed dur­ing the seed­ing games aren’t there in the play­offs. Cuts and sec­ond-chance points, like the kind that helped Porter reach sec­ond-team All-Bub­ble sta­tus, elic­it far more attention.

“All that is kind of tak­en away,” he said. “It’s kind of a dif­fer­ent style of basketball.”

All of it, from Porter’s encour­ag­ing moments to the 12 min­utes he played in the sec­ond half, was invalu­able. Even the third-quar­ter sequence where Porter casu­al­ly received a pass from Nuggets cen­ter Mason Plum­lee, only to have it poked away by Ingles, was impor­tant. They’re all learn­ing moments for a rook­ie who’s get­ting his first sense of play­off urgency. Injuries to Gary Har­ris and Will Bar­ton have expe­dit­ed his time­line, but his play in sev­en seed­ing games cer­tain­ly war­rant­ed a start­ing position.

“Regard­less of who Michael matched up against, for him to go out there and get play­off min­utes is invalu­able,” said Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one, who’s acknowl­edged many times how rare Porter’s offen­sive skills are. “Obvi­ous­ly his steep­est learn­ing curve is going to be on the defen­sive end of the floor. And the real­i­ty is teams have looked to put him in a lot of actions and to go at him, so he’s got­ta take that per­son­al­ly and show teams that he can sit down and guard.”

Even in the chaos of Monday’s dra­mat­ic vic­to­ry, and with only a day to solve Dono­van Mitchell’s dev­as­tat­ing play­mak­ing, Mal­one had a sober­ing thought. Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with Game 1 hero Jamal Mur­ray, Mal­one said he real­ized that Mur­ray and fel­low cor­ner­stone Niko­la Jokic each had ample expe­ri­ence before meet­ing the play­off gaunt­let last sea­son. Murray’s three years of NBA expe­ri­ence and Jokic’s four served them well to pre­pare them for the Spurs and the Trail Blaz­ers. Mon­day was Porter’s 56th game of his career.

“Just being out there, learn­ing, going through it, you can’t put a dol­lar sign on that,” Mal­one said. “That’s the best teacher that Michael is going to have. We can tell him, we can pre­pare him, but he has to go out there and feel it for him­self and learn from it, which I know he will.”