Charlotte Hornets: Was Miles Bridges the right pick?

Michael Porter Jr.

Porter Jr. is the ultimate Prep School Mixtape player. Watch any film of him in high school, and he looks like Reggie Miller mixed with Chris Bosh. A 6’10″+ wing with the athleticism of a guard and deep shooting range? That sounds like the combination of skills that will one day form the player who takes LeBron’s throne.

He had scouts and fans utterly convinced that he’d be the #1 pick in the 2018 NBA draft before this past college basketball season. That was all before an incredibly unfortunate back injury sidelined him for almost the entirety of his year at Missouri.

The potential as an offensive juggernaut was there going into the draft, but the fear was too. His physical report was passed around the league, and 12 teams chose to skip him on draft day. (Perhaps the brightest red flag of all time: even the Knicks thought drafting Porter would be a “reckless” decision.)

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You can understand why. This is, after all, an injury similar to Steve Kerr‘s devastating back issue that has left the Warriors boss on the edge of forced retirement for the past several years. Here is the difference, though: Porter Jr. is having these problems at 19.

But I digress: the hype surrounding Porter was reaching a fever-pitch around draft time. The “home run” swing. The “high-risk, high-reward” option. The “highest ceiling in the draft.” These were all the things that analysts called Michael Porter Jr. prior to the draft and immediately following its conclusion.

Here’s the problem with all of those statements: risk is not, in and of itself, a valuable thing. Porter Jr. represents one of the riskiest selections in the past decade of the NBA draft, but that doesn’t make him a good selection by any means.

Every single player drafted into the NBA has barriers to their greatness. Some like Anthony Davis or Kevin Durant have very small, feeble barriers that they destroy early on in their careers. Others, like Kawhi Leonard or our beloved Kemba Walker had rather large barriers that they have worked to overcome–and then some.

The truth is that every prospect has things to like about him and things that might hold him back. Porter Jr. has many of the former, but he has a disproportionately large amount of the latter.

More to the point, certain franchises are at liberty to take risks that others are not. For example, the Los Angeles Lakers were able to gamble their way unsuccessfully through the last decade and still land a top-2 all-time player in free agency this summer. A team like Charlotte couldn’t imagine such a luxury. We must succeed in the draft or through trades; there is not a proven alternative for small-market teams.

(As any Hornet fan knows, this is why we are where we are: just missing out on Anthony Davis, passing on the batch of picks from Danny Ainge to draft Frank Kaminsksy, Adam Morrison…)

While Denver (the team that eventually selected Porter Jr. at #14) may not seem like an amazing franchise at the moment, they do have the luxury of developing a potential top-10 player in Nikola Jokic. They drafted him out of the blue, and he’s turned out to be incredible.

This allows them some “wiggle room” going forward. So what if Porter Jr. doesn’t turn out to be a star? They have Jokic and Gary Harris and Jamal Murray who have all demonstrated they will likely be exceptional players. Why not take a shot on Porter Jr.?

The same is not true for Charlotte. Kemba is 28. Besides Kemba, what are we? The payroll is atrocious, but we’re also too good to “tank” in the East. As such, our draft picks have to work out in a way that they don’t have to for other franchises.

The mega-superstar potential players were off the board by pick #4 when Jaren Jackson went to Memphis. So why not draft Porter Jr. at #12? Well, we need players who will be good and who could be spectacular–not players who might be nothing but could be spectacular.

Besides, haven’t the past five or more years of drafts taught us that some high-work ethic, high-character, underrated guy always rises to the top of his draft class within a few seasons? It’s becoming about as predictable as anything in “NBA Draft-world.” Donovan Mitchell (#13), Malcolm Brogdon (#36), Devin Booker (#13), Jokic (#41), and Giannis (#15) is the short list of guys that come to mind.

(“Who is this year’s Donovan Mitchell” was no doubt a question you heard many times this summer leading up to the draft.)

Obviously, give me that type of draft pick any day. This begs the question, though: when we see an underrated draft pick turn into a star, was he underrated because of a major injury concern? How often does that happen?

Joel Embiid comes to mind, but it took a #3 pick to get him, so it’s hard to call him “underrated.” Maybe OG Anunoby in last year’s draft at #23? He looks good so far, but even he had an ACL tear that has become rather commonplace in today’s NBA.

Harry Giles (#20 in 2017) is maybe MPJ’s closest comparison, and his multiple knee injuries have only ever lessened his athletic explosiveness–no one has ever really questioned Giles’s basketball IQ or his long-term ability to have a role in the league.

Underrated guys on draft night who go on to be uber-successful players in the NBA are not the guys who have injury histories. They’re underrated for other reasons (Mitchell: size, Brogdon: age, Booker: “one-trick pony,” Jokic: unathletic/”fat,” Giannis: weird Greek dude playing in a gym with 7th graders).

I cannot credibly argue that MPJ has a higher ceiling than the other three guys in this article. Rewind to May of 2017? I maybe could’ve made that argument. But today his basketball problems are just as glaring as SGA, Walker IV or Bridges, while his injury history is downright frightening.

The Hornets had access to Porter’s physical. They knew his limitations: poor shot selection, questionable passing vision, negligible rebounding effort/ability, lack of ball-handling versatility. Forget being able to afford the risk or needing to seek out high-ceiling players. When it came down to it, MPJ’s riskiness did not grant him a higher ceiling: it simply meant that he had every opportunity not to succeed in the NBA and, specifically, as a Charlotte Hornet.

Was Bridges the right pick? Yes, by quite a large margin in my opinion. I may be eating my words when MPJ gets inducted into the hall of fame in 2040, but, on draft night, Bridges was the right guy at our slot.