On paper, Michael Porter Jr. would be the perfect long-term answer for the Detroit Pistons at power forward.
He has size, he can shoot the lights out, he fits the timeline and is an NBA champion who brings plenty of big-game experience.
But there is a different type of paper to worry about, which is the $38 and 40 million left on MPJ’s deal over the next two seasons.
The Nuggets found out firsthand how hard it is to build a deep roster when your top four guys are making huge money, and it showed in the playoffs when they ran out of gas against the Thunder.
The Nuggets are set to be over the first tax apron again next season, which makes roster improvements difficult, so we may see them break up their core four of Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon.
Magic fans are dreaming of Murray, while some Pistons fans are eyeballing MPJ as a long-term solution to their power forward problem, but be careful what you wish for, as the Nuggets are no longer the model for how to build sustainable success.
Detroit Pistons must avoid overpaying good but not great players
The new CBA makes going over the tax aprons painful for teams both in terms of money and roster construction, as it limits trades and punishes teams financially.
The Nuggets have long been a team built on efficiency, so it’s hard to imagine them continuing to be an apron team forever.
One of the reasons they are stuck in this position is because they gave max deals to guys like Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., who are both good players but not All-Stars.
Murray’s contract ramps up to $57.5 million by 2028-29 and MPJ will be making $38 and 40 over the next two seasons.
You can argue for Murray as a max guy, as he is at least a big time playoff performer, but MPJ averaged 9 points per game in 14 playoff games this season, hardly worth that kind of salary.
The one caveat with MPJ is that his deal only goes for two more seasons, but that’s a lot of money to pay for a guy who was arguably the 5th or 6th best player on the Nuggets in the playoffs this season.
These are the exact types of players teams need to avoid in the Apron Era, and I do think we’ll start seeing fewer of the star-not-superstar players getting these types of deals, as it makes it almost impossible to build a deep roster if you are giving huge deals to non-max guys.
Denver is still very good and narrowly missing the Western Conference Finals this season, so it's not like they are a catastrophe, but it's going to be tough to sustain moving forward, especially in the Western Conference that just keeps getting better.
That’s why the Pistons have to be careful with their own free agents and extensions, as well as choosing the right second star to put next to Cade Cunningham. Denver is no longer the model and may have been replaced by Indiana as the small-market team who has figured out the blueprint to success in the new tax reality.