'You're gonna play again': Jontay Porter's arduous road back to the NBA

Michael Porter Jr. couldn’t believe what he had just heard.

The Porter family was taking in a Missouri basketball game when a fan approached Michael’s younger brother, Jontay, in the concourse. The Porters are very well known around those parts, as brothers Michael Jr., Jontay and their two sisters, Bri and Ciera, grew up in Columbia, Missouri, and all played for Missouri in college. Their father, Michael Sr., was also an assistant coach while Jontay and Michael Jr. were there.

Michael Jr. had since gone on to become a key piece of a title-hopeful Denver Nuggets team, while Jontay had been off the basketball radar for a while.

“Hey, Jontay, where you playing this year?” Jontay remembers the fan asking.

Slightly ashamed of being unsigned and frustrated with years of persistent knee injuries, Jontay revealed to the fan something he hadn’t yet shared with his brother.

“I’m not playing anymore,” Jontay said.

The walk back to the family’s courtside seats was tense. Jontay could feel Michael Jr. steaming. No eye contact. No banter. Finally, Michael shot his younger brother a stern look.

“Stop saying that, ‘Tay,” Michael said. “You’re gonna play again.”

In addition to wanting to see his brother succeed, Michael’s point was this: If he could undergo a pair of very serious back surgeries, fight his way back first as a draft prospect and then at the NBA level, turn himself into a borderline All-Star and the key piece of an eventual championship team, then certainly Jontay could win that same battle with his knees.

“I just kind of told him, like, ‘Jontay, if I can get through my stuff, you better not give up,’” Michael said. “I'm like, ‘You’ve got to treat this like your job, you've got to take it serious, and, you know, you'll be able to play in this league. You're an NBA player, for sure.’ He decided he wanted to do it.”

Jontay was back in the gym the next day with a renewed sense of purpose. A few weeks later, Michael would nudge the Nuggets toward signing Jontay for their 2022 Summer League team to get the ball rolling in earnest on his comeback.

There have been no setbacks since. It’s the longest stretch of healthy play Jontay has experienced since high school, the health of his knees giving way to success on the court. On Dec. 9, 2023, the Raptors signed Jontay to a two-way contract.

On Wednesday, Jontay appeared in an NBA game for the first time since May 14, 2021.

When Jontay Porter nearly walked away from basketball, you could certainly understand the frustration. He’d gone from top prospect and potential first-round pick to unsigned free agent worrying about his ability to play with his kids when he got older due to the state of his knees.

His career path was initially laid out quite nicely. Jontay spent his high school years playing alongside older brother Michael, first in Missouri and then under former NBA player Brandon Roy in Seattle. The experience of playing — and training — with Michael had helped build Jontay into a uniquely skilled complementary piece, someone who can thrive playing off a more ball-dominant star and who had learned to do the little things to help make a star player better.

“He's a complete player,” Michael said. “Like in high school, when we would play together all growing up, he made my job so easy. He's one of those guys that just makes it easy for everybody, can pass, rebound, defend, he can shoot, stretch the floor. He's just a complete player. Like, really enjoyable to play with.”

Jontay himself was still considered a five-star recruit when he reclassified so he could join Michael and their father, Michael Sr., at Missouri, but he’d built his game to be the best teammate possible. He didn’t necessarily need the ball to thrive, and a small growth spurt before his freshman season took a more perimeter-oriented offensive skillset into the post. Jontay had developed into a hard-screening, slick-passing co-star to Michael Jr., and expectations were high with the brothers back home with the Tigers.

It was Michael, not Jontay, who lost most of his freshman year due to back surgery. That gave Jontay room to expand his own game and play a larger role in helping lead Missouri to the NCAA tournament. Both brothers entered the 2018 NBA Draft, but while Michael stayed in and became the No. 14 pick, Jontay opted to return to Missouri for a sophomore season to push his draft stock even higher.

That’s when his path toward nearly retiring early began.

In an October scrimmage just before the start of the season, Jontay tore his ACL and MCL while damaging a number of other parts of his right knee. Feeling good and wanting to return in time for the 2019 NBA Draft, Jontay re-tore his ACL and MCL in late March progressing to dynamic movements before he’d been fully cleared.

Jontay stayed in the 2019 NBA Draft anyway. The combine interview process, which included an interested Raptors front office, focused almost exclusively on his health and his timeline for a return. At one point graded as a possible first-round pick in the 2018 draft, Jontay went undrafted in 2019, with no NBA team opting to secure his rights while he rehabilitated. That rehab — an isolating endeavour in the best of situations — was something Jontay would have to continue alone.

On March 8, 2020, it was reported that Jontay had signed a multi-year deal with the Memphis Grizzlies. Three days later, the NBA shut down.

When the league relaunched, Jontay was a member of the Grizzlies in the NBA bubble. Memphis had no intention of playing him initially, instead having him focus on continuing his rehab with an eye toward the future. The bubble experience was strange for any NBA player, but for Jontay and the similarly rehabbing Justise Winslow, who didn’t have the benefit of playing time to justify the seclusion, the situation could grow frustrating.

“Jontay and I both kind of found ourselves outside the rotation for a good amount of time. It was a lot of extra work, you know, playing three-on-three with some of the coaches and stuff like that,” said Winslow, now Jontay’s teammate with Raptors 905. “We built a pretty good relationship, leaning on each other for just advice and support and, you know, days when you don't feel like the most motivated, we kind of leaned on each other for that. So, it's a good relationship, and I'm glad he's here with us now.”

Neither would appear in games in the bubble. Jontay did show enough, however, after declining a team option on his contract for 2020-21, the Grizzlies re-signed him to a new multi-year deal, giving him a chance to compete for actual playing time. Jontay felt healthy and ready.

In the first three-man-weave drill of training camp, he felt a tweak in his surgically repaired knee, which later swelled up.

While Jontay would eventually make his NBA debut on March 15, 2021, and appear in 11 games for the Grizzlies, including one against Michael and the Nuggets, Jontay needed several ibuprofen before every game to manage the pain in his knees, which he described as “crumbling” every time he played.

He never quite got traction at the NBA level and struggled over nine games assigned to the G League bubble. The Grizzlies waived him after the season.

Nearly a year later, Jontay was having the fateful conversation with Michael at a Missouri game.

The road back to the NBA for a player with a lot of injury history can be an arduous one. Not only do you have to show you’re healthy again, but you also have to show you can still play at the same level, and play well enough to warrant future injury risk. Winslow is in the process of trying to show that to teams right now through the G League, just as Jontay has been able to do the last 18 months.

After Michael convinced Jontay to keep fighting, Jontay landed with the Nuggets for Summer League. He didn’t play big minutes but showed enough that the Milwaukee Bucks brought him into their G League program for 2022-23 with an Exhibit 10 deal. He played in 32 games, averaging 12.4 points, 10 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 2.1 blocks while hitting a respectable 34.1 per cent on 3-point attempts. More importantly, Jontay was the healthiest he’d been since high school; since July 2022, he’s yet to miss a game because of his knees.

Although that strong season didn’t earn him an NBA contract, he had his pick of a number of teams as an Exhibit 10 camp-slash-G League player this off-season. The Chicago Bulls had interest after he played with their Summer League team, and the Raptors, who had checked in on him ever since considering him with the No. 59 pick in the 2019 draft, approached him about a spot with Raptors 905. Jontay ultimately signed with the Pistons for camp, as they offered a clearer path to a potential role as a rebuilding franchise.

After 10 games with Detroit’s G League team, with Jontay about to board a five-hour bus trip to play Windy City, the Raptors came calling. The Raptors signed him to a two-way contract that allows him to go back and forth between the NBA and G League, earning half the NBA minimum salary (instead of the much smaller Exhibit 10 G League salary), where he’s allowed to spend up to 50 games active for the NBA team.

“They had thrown a few names around, but he was kind of like a consensus name that everybody was excited about,” 905 head coach Eric Khoury said. “He's such a smart guy. His teammates loved him right away from the beginning. He communicates so well. He's great on the court and off the court, so, obviously, all the guys gravitate towards that.”

The Raptors see potential in Jontay to become a second-unit big at the NBA level. His combination of shooting and passing fits the style the Raptors want to play, and he checks other boxes as a very physical screen-setter who can roll or pop and as a solid rim protector in more conservative defensive coverages. What permeates across all of those skills is that Jontay thinks and reads the game at an elite level.

“I think he's a rotational big in this league, if not for injuries that kind of slowed down his development,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic, who was an assistant with the Grizzlies while Jontay was there. “His basketball IQ is very high. He can shoot the ball. He's a very willing passer as well. I think he's going to be a really good fit for us, for 905 but also when opportunities present itself to see him play on the big stage with us as well. I've got a ton of respect for him, knowing what he was going through.”

Over 16 G League games this season, Jontay is averaging 16.6 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.8 blocks, and he’s pushed his three-point percentage to 37.1 per cent on nearly six attempts per game, a significant skill for a pick-and-pop and face-up style big.

“He's just a versatile big. I think his playmaking is a truly underrated factor, especially off of offensive rebounds, playing at the elbow,” Winslow said. “There's some guys that can make the passes but can't remember a play at the same time. Jontay checks all those boxes. He's a high-IQ guy. He can make the reads in live action. He has a really high basketball IQ, I would say.”

He’s surpassed defensive expectations with the 905, too, assuaging potential mobility concerns with good timing, use of size and an ability to shift off-ball against particularly difficult pick-and-roll matchups.

“Having a backline defender who's talking all the time helps the other four guys so much,” Khoury said. “His defence has been really good with us, and all the tape I've watched, as well. He’s not a traditional shot-blocker in the sense that he's jumping up and meeting guys at the box, necessarily, but he's got great timing and he's able to use his hands well to get deflections, steals, and kind of those blocks as [they] bring the ball up.”

Most importantly for a two-way player, there is a belief Jontay has more developmental runway still than another player who is nearly six years removed from his last college game. He just turned 24, and because he’s played so little actual on-court basketball the last few years, it’s possible he has more to unlock.

As he is right now, Jontay has a case to make for bench minutes with the NBA Raptors. On Wednesday, he made his Raptors debut against Memphis, playing seven solid first-half minutes as the team’s ninth man and backup centre.

Almost 32 months since he last appeared in an NBA game — for the Grizzlies, no less — it was a big moment.

“There's a lot a lot of emotions going on,” he said. “A lot of fun just to be involved with the team, the Raptors, getting called up. A lot of emotions that come with that. It was cool. It made me a lot more involved on the bench like realizing I have an impact on the game, when I was about to go in. 'Excitement' is a word that comes to mind when kind of trying to encapsulate all the emotions going on.”

He missed both of his three-point attempts and picked up two quick fouls, but he set a number of good screens (and is constantly looking for the next guy to set a screen for), made good passing reads in semi-transition, grabbed a couple of rebounds, and even held his own defensively against a very difficult Ja Morant-Jaren Jackson Jr. duo. The Raptors aren’t asking him to be Kelly Olynyk right away; providing six-to-10 steady minutes for the second unit would be plenty right now as they reconfigure their rotations post-Precious Achiuwa.

“’Don’t mess up,’ pretty much,” Jontay said of his mentality Wednesday. “Hopefully, I get to build on this, but if not, regardless, I'll take what I learned here and go back to 905 and do my thing there. Regardless of what happens, I'm blessed to be in Toronto, and that's the bottom line.”

Jontay’s return to NBA action is as big a deal for the family as it is for him individually. Jontay, Michael Jr. and their sisters Bri and Cierra have all dealt with career-threatening injuries, and Michael feels a deep pride that his younger brother has been able to make it back.

“You know, sometimes the NBA, there's so many new people that come in every year that once you're in and then out, it's sometimes hard to get back in,” Michael said. “I'm just happy for him that he's healthy, he's proving how good he is, and he's gonna get a shot.”

On March 11, Jontay and Michael Jr. may get their second chance to play head-to-head in the NBA when the Raptors visit the Nuggets. They’ve spent a lifetime playing together, crediting each other for their own success, and, if both are healthy at the same time, pushing each other during off-seasons. Jontay even takes advantage of Michael’s additional resources — trainers, chefs, facilities — that a max contract allow for.

“He's probably the reason I'm still playing basketball today,” Jontay said. “And probably the main reason I'm, I guess, as good a basketball player as I am today, because he was the one forcing me to go to the gym with him in the mornings, forcing me to guard him one-on-one, forcing me to pass him the ball when we were playing on the same team. So, a lot of my attributes I owe to him. It usually ends in a shoving match or a one-on-one match, but it's a lot of fun being with him.”

It took Jontay finally verbalizing the persistent, negative thoughts about his injuries for Michael to give him the last, hard push toward a successful comeback. It wasn’t the easiest of conversations, and Michael’s frustration with him is still something Jontay remembers well. He understands why he felt the way he did, but believes Michael got him back on the right path.

Sometimes, you need to hear the toughest talk from your best friend.

“I'm glad he did, man, because I do love basketball,” Jontay said. “I think just the snowball effect of having disappointment after letdown after getting waived after injury after whatever the case may be, it was just a lot of stuff that went into it where I was about ready to give up. But, thanks to him, and obviously some other people in my life, I gave it another go and I'm feeling as good as ever. So, it's quite the comeback story, I guess. Hopefully, it has a happy ending.”