Michael Porter Jr. declared for the NBA Draft on Monday afternoon. He did so the way he did most things during his 367-day Mizzou career: on Instagram. Missouri fans never really got to know him and never really got to see him play.
So now, we're left to decide, what should we think of the MPJ era at Mizzou?
Obviously, I can't tell you what to think. Everyone is going to have his opinion and they're likely to be all over the map.
For those who will immediately respond "What career?" it's a fair reaction. Porter scored 30 points as a Tiger. It was the fewest of any scholarship player who saw the floor this year; yes, fewer than Blake Harris or Terrence Phillips, neither of whom finished the season on the roster, fewer (by more than half) than Cullen VanLeer or Reed Nikko, who averaged fewer than two-and-a-half per game.
So, yeah, it's fair if your immediate reaction is that Porter really didn't do much for Mizzou. Because on the court, he didn't.
He tried. He came back for the season's final two games to a desperately thin team and he hoisted 29 shots. Only nine of them found the bottom of the net and watching Porter try to navigate his way around a basketball court was somewhat akin to what I imgaine watching Roger Clemens try to strike out Major League Hitters with an 84-mile-an-hour fastball and no off-speed stuff would be like. It was Porter, but it wasn't PORTER. You knew there was more there. He just couldn't summon it.
And if your assessment of Porter's career in a Mizzou uniform stops just with what he did while actually wearing a Mizzou uniform, your assessment of his legacy won't be long...or kind.
But Porter's impact went beyond that. By far.
He committed to the Tigers on March 24, 2017, with a Twitter post that sent Mizzou fans into a frenzy they had never before experienced. The next seven-and-a-half months were one big long bender, fueled by an injection of Porter positivity into a program that had nothing but negativity for the past three years. It was a gourmet seven-course-meal for a starving man, a forest in full bloom after nuclear winter, a last-minute pardon right before the executioner threw the switch (or some might argue a few seasons after).
Jontay Porter came. Jeremiah Tilmon came. Kassius Robertson came. It can be argued a couple of those things might have happened anyway...but not with any certainty. Season tickets sold out before a game was played. There's no way to argue that would have happened.
Missouri basketball wasn't just relevant. The Tigers had the best off-season in the country. And that includes a North Carolina program won a national title and laughed in the face of the NCAA. And then they went and won 20 games and got back to the NCAA Tournament and reminded everybody that Missouri basketball was good and fans did care.
How important was Porter? We're 12 paragraphs in and I haven't even mentioned the head coach. Cuonzo Martin did one of the country's better coaching jobs--in large part because Porter was hurt. The fans fell in love with him over the course of a 12-month honeymoon. But how much of that happens without Porter? It's impossible to know, but not hard to argue most of it doesn't. At least not this soon.
Martin might have turned Missouri basketball around on his own. He might have done it in year two or year three or who knows when. But he almost certainly wouldn't have done it as quickly and dramatically as he did without Porter.
From the day he committed, all but the world's most cockeyed-optimist knew that MPJ would spend less than a calendar year on campus. What Martin's career--and Missouri's program--become was always going to be determined by what happened after he was gone.
Yeah, we thought we'd get to see more than 50 minutes of him. We didn't expect the highlight to be a layup against Iowa State before he limped off the floor. Part of us is always going to wonder what might have been if he'd been healthy.
But because he came back, because he tried and it seemed genuinely important to him, you will care about him going forward. Had Porter played only those two minutes against the Cyclones, Missouri fans would have noticed his NBA career, but they probably wouldn't have been invested in it. But now? Now, whatever Michael Porter Jr. does from here, he does as a Missouri Tiger. You will follow him and you will claim him.
He left Missouri fans wanting more, no question. But he gave you so much. He gave you hope and relevancy and joy. He gave you your program back. How do you measure that?
