Unthink­ably, Michael Porter Jr. would be made of iron, if not for some faulty string.

On Feb. 9 in Sacra­men­to, the Nuggets were embark­ing on a two-game week­end road trip. They were mer­ci­ful­ly one week away from the All-Star break, a much-need­ed breather for a team that had played 102 games the pre­vi­ous sea­son en route to a championship.

Porter, in par­tic­u­lar, was push­ing him­self phys­i­cal­ly more than any sea­son yet in his NBA career. He hadn’t missed a sin­gle game. An upcom­ing vaca­tion in Mex­i­co was going to work won­ders for him, if he could just … make it … to the break.

Then, a shoe debacle.

“The shoes that I had packed — the laces were torn, and I just didn’t feel safe play­ing in them,” Porter said last Sun­day. “I brought the wrong shoes, really.”

So MPJ sat that night in Sacra­men­to, a 135–106 blowout loss that began a three-game skid going into All-Star week­end. He didn’t miss anoth­er con­test. In fact, he returned from Mex­i­co with a mild sun­burn and a blaz­ing 3‑point stroke. He shot 50.9% from the field, 40.4% beyond the arc and 90.7% from the foul line in Denver’s last 27 games of the reg­u­lar sea­son, a 21–6 stretch for the team.

“The one game I missed was because I didn’t have the right shoes,” Porter said, smiling.

Lac­ing them up (safe­ly) for 81 of 82 isn’t too shab­by, espe­cial­ly giv­en Porter’s exten­sive injury his­to­ry. He’s had three back surg­eries since the Nuggets draft­ed him 14th over­all in 2018, miss­ing 70 or more games in mul­ti­ple sea­sons. His pre­vi­ous career high in games played was last sea­son, when he appeared in 62, plus all 20 play­off con­tests. In Denver’s title defense, his reg­u­lar sea­son alone almost equalled the com­bined total from 2022–23.

“After every­thing I’ve been through,” he said, “that prob­a­bly means the most to me out of everything.”

Porter’s evo­lu­tion into a pil­lar of dura­bil­i­ty rep­re­sents his team’s stur­di­ness. The Nuggets are enter­ing their first-round series against the Lak­ers with a start­ing line­up that played 958 min­utes togeth­er in the reg­u­lar sea­son. No oth­er five-man line­up in the league played 800 min­utes. The last time a five-man unit played more than 958 min­utes togeth­er in any reg­u­lar sea­son was 2017–18, when the Jim­my But­ler-fea­tured Tim­ber­wolves used a line­up that sur­passed 1,100 minutes.

In addi­tion to being con­sis­tent­ly avail­able, this Nuggets start­ing five was near­ly unstop­pable. Its net rat­ing for the sea­son was 13.6.

Porter has been crit­i­cal, step­ping up and embrac­ing his role as a sec­ond scor­ing option when­ev­er Jamal Mur­ray has been out due to var­i­ous leg injuries (the only per­sis­tent health prob­lem Denver’s faced all season).

“I told Michael he deserves so much cred­it,” coach Michael Mal­one said. “The rea­son he dropped to us on draft night was because there were con­cerns about his health and his back. For him to get to this point where he’s play­ing 81 of 82 games and play­ing at a high lev­el is just incredible.”

The 6‑foot-10 perime­ter sniper want­ed to prove some­thing to him­self in the 82nd and final game of the reg­u­lar sea­son. Porter was feel­ing ill. The Nuggets were in Mem­phis for a game they prob­a­bly could have sur­vived with­out a starter or two. After all, the Griz­zlies were miss­ing 13 play­ers, accord­ing to their own injury report.

“I don’t know if I got food poi­son­ing from the pregame meal or what it was, but I was down bad the last cou­ple nights, throw­ing up and stuff,” Porter said. “But I’d played 80 out of 81 games, and the one game I missed was because I didn’t have the right shoes. So I want­ed to fin­ish the reg­u­lar sea­son play­ing every game that I could. … I didn’t want to miss a game because I couldn’t play.”

Let it be known, then: The only rea­son Porter didn’t have an Iron Man sea­son was wardrobe-relat­ed, not health-related.

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