'Role model': Raptors benefitting from healthy Porter Jr.'s impact on and off court

DALLAS — Late in the fourth quarter of the Toronto Raptors' dramatic comeback win over the San Antonio Spurs, Otto Porter Jr. threw himself on the ground to wrestle for a loose ball in a crowd of much younger players and if you know anything about the 11-year veteran’s luck with injuries, you held your breath.

There are plenty of basketball superlatives that the former No. 3 overall pick in 2013 out of Georgetown has earned in his career, but durable isn’t one of them.

This is the start of just his second season with the Raptors, and for most of the time with the club, injuries have been the top-line item. A hamstring strain in training camp a year ago kept him out of the lineup until the eighth game of the season. He put in some good minutes over the next eight games and then dislocated his toe in a win over the Detroit Pistons and… that was it. Porter was done for the year, eventually requiring surgery. 

It marked the fourth time in the previous five seasons Porter Jr. had missed 30 games or more due to injury. The exception? That was 2021-22 when he played 63 games for the Golden State Warriors, was a starter in the NBA Finals and helped the Dubs dynasty to their fourth championship, a perfect fit with a savvy, veteran, winning group.

It was that experience and his accompanying track record as an elite shooter, team defender, rebounder, and all-around high-IQ presence that the Raptors were hoping to add to their mix when they gave him a two-year, $12.3 million contract in free agency in the summer of 2022.

On the whole, the returns have been lacking, but already this season, the 30-year-old has shown why he might have been the missing piece to the Raptors confounding puzzle from a year ago, a frustrating season that ended in the play-in tournament.

“He helps us so much,” Raptors wing Scottie Barnes was gushing the other day. “He’s a leader when he’s out there on the floor, talking to us, communicating, seeing those different reads, making those big-time plays on the defensive end, boxing out. He stretches the floor when he’s out there. He has so much IQ and knowledge of the game. He makes an instant impact.”

So, all that said, does a relatively rickety 30-year-old vet think twice about wrestling for a loose ball in just his second significant stint of playing time in almost 13 months?

“Well, when you want to win, no,” said Porter Jr. as the Raptors were getting prepared to play the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday, which should mark his third game this season after a slow build-up through training camp following his long lay-off from last year. “Your body just takes over. You’re thinking time, possession, we need to get a stop, we need these 50-50 balls. You gotta go get it. You got to go sacrifice yourself. So you do it. I’ve been at the highest levels, and I know what it takes to win. You have to do the little stuff like that. And you gotta set the example for the young’uns. If I can get down on the floor, you should be able to as well. It’s basically just setting a tone for the game, just trying to hustle and get that spark for my teammates.”

It was a spark that was often lacking last season. There were too many times through an ultimately frustrating season when it was obvious that an additional three-point shooter or facilitator or versatile defender could have been a difference maker. Because Porter Jr. never really played last season, the impact of his absence eventually became a non-issue, but did he wonder ‘what if’ when he was rehabbing at his home in Florida last season? Could he have been the difference maker the Raptors needed?

“I don’t know, I couldn’t say, but I do know that when I do play, I try to play winning basketball, whatever the game needs, that’s what I try to provide,” he said.

Still, in just two stints so far this season, it’s evident that a healthy Porter Jr. can impact games. It's no coincidence that’s he played in each of Toronto’s most impressive wins so far this year — a blowout win at home against the Milwaukee Bucks and the comeback from down 22 in San Antonio on Sunday.

Against the Bucks Porter Jr. was plus-11 in 16 minutes of floor time and against the Spurs he was plus-9 in 19 minutes. In 35 minutes he’s scored 12 points, grabbed seven rebounds, blocked two shots, and made half of his three-point attempts.

But more significantly is that Porter Jr. seems to infuse the lineups he’s in — typically with a mix of second-unit players who need it — with an almost point-guard-like calm. He directs traffic. He makes simple passes, and he moves for the benefit of others.

It’s always been thus. Garrett Temple was with the Wizards when Porter Jr. joined Washington as the No. 3 pick out of nearby Georgetown. Even as a teenaged pro, it wasn’t his athleticism that popped.

“His rookie year, Glen Rice Jr. was the [Wizards second-round pick] and he was the high-flyer, athletic, just a bucket getter,” Temple recalls. “And early on guys were like  ‘Otto’s the three pick, he’s not as ‘boom’ as you’d expect’. And then once you start to see how he plays and talk to him and just really see him play, you understand this is why he was so effective at Georgetown and how  he’s gonna be in the league for a long time … he’s always been very cerebral, had a high IQ.”

While Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic is trying to impress upon his team the need to cut and pass and move for the benefit of the next player, for Porter Jr. it’s just ‘how to play basketball’.

“I mean, I’ve been playing this way since I was in elementary school,” he says the native of Morley, Missouri, a small town in the southeast part of the state. “Growing up I was taught to play the game the right way. It’s easy for me to play like that. It’s how I know how to play.”

If there’s an old-school feel to Porter Jr.’s game, it could be because he’s got a direct link to basketball royalty and an earlier age. He’s the last remaining client of one-time NBA super agent David Falk, who helped shape the business of basketball in the 1980s and 1990s as Michael Jordan’s representative. Falk also represented Jordan’s Olympic teammate, Patrick Ewing, the first of a long line of Georgetown clients he had on his roster.

It was the Georgetown connection that led Porter Jr. to Falk, and it was while at Georgetown that the Raptors forward played for John Thompson III, and spent considerable time with legendary Hoya’s coach John Thompson Jr., who was coach emeritus and a regular presence around the program when Porter Jr. was there in 2011-12 and 2012-13. 

“Me, family, where I group, we’re old-school type people,” said Porter Jr. whose mother and father each won state championships in high school as did four of his uncles, his younger brother, and a long list of first cousins.  Playing selfish, me-first basketball was not an option.

“That’s just been my mentality, from my parents, my uncles, that’s the way the game is played. Do the little stuff, that’s how I was taught,” he says as he sucks down a recovery drink after practice. “There is no ‘I’ in team. In basketball it takes five guys.”

The Raptors would love to have that outlook permeate their roster and will be managing Porter Jr.’s minutes carefully so he can stay as healthy as possible. He won’t playing in back-to-backs too often, it’s safe to predict. But his presence matters. Rookie Gradey Dick — who projects to play a similar role as his sharpshooting veteran — has already been able to pick Porter Jr.’s prodigious basketball brain.

“As a rookie it’s really cool to see not only what he’s doing right now, but draw on the experiences he has,” says Dick. “He’s been kind of a role model. We talk about different windows or gaps you can get in on the floor based on where the point guard is at, where the defence is at. A lot of advice I wouldn’t get anywhere else.”

Porter Jr. provides a lot of what any team would need and is hard to find.  The Raptors have had it all along but are only now benefitting from it, holding their collective breath along the way.