Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. hasn’t yet played a game for the Nets yet after being acquired from the team via trade from the Denver Nuggets this offseason. Porter has made it clear that he is looking forward to play for Brooklyn after his time in Denver, but he has taken his free time during the summer to address some of the other matters that he’s dealing with.
“Everybody has different things that they struggle with. That can go from people that struggle with alcohol, people that struggle with drugs,” Porter said (starting at the 2:19 mark of the video) in his vlog that he posted to his “Curious Mike” YouTube channel. Porter has used his channel to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at his life outside of basketball, much like what he is doing during this truth session.
“My brother, for example, struggled with gambling,” Porter continued, referencing his brother, Jontay Porter, who used to play for the Toronto Raptors before being banned from the NBA for gambling. “My vice has always come in the form of women. When I’m far from God and like I’m not in my word, I’m not praying, I’m not prioritizing him, like that seems to be the place that the devil gets me is in the space of women.”
When it comes to Porter’s brother, the NBA banned him from the league for life last April and that was before he pleaded guilty to wire fraud as part of the investigation. The former Missouri Tiger has not found himself in any trouble legally, but his admission that the problem he is dealing with is finding a woman to settle down with seems like something that has weighed on his mind throughout the years.
Porter, 27, comes to the Nets after spending the past seven seasons with the Nuggets, including a 2024-25 campaign in which he averaged 18.2 points, 7.0 rebounds, and 2.1 assists per game while shooting 50.4% from the field and 39.5% from three-point land. After the surprising trade that sent Porter to Brooklyn, it seems like he will have the chance to reset his life on and off the court.