It has been an awful week for Michael Porter Jr. after one of his brothers was jailed for six years and another brother was banned from the NBA for a betting scandal.
Porter Jr. is trying to focus on winning a championship with the Nuggets.
But the day before the opening game of Denver’s first round series against LAL, he testified for his brother Coban in court.
Coban was handed down a six-year sentence after pleading guilty to DUI charges that resulted in a woman’s death and the passenger in the car being severely injured.
Two days before that, former Raptors player and another of Porter’s younger brothers, Jontay Porter, was handed a lifetime ban by the NBA for breaching the league’s gambling rules.
“Definitely tried to compartmentalize, some bad and sad stuff happened to a couple of my brothers,” MPJ told reporters after Saturday’s 114-103 win over the Los Angeles Lakers. “But I got, you know, 15, 16 more brothers in here, so I knew I had to be here for them and come in here and do my job and try to prepare to do it at a high level.”
Porter Jr. explained that he received text messages of support from his teammates, saying “they got my back if I needed anything, they got me”.
“To have these guys understand why I missed practice yesterday and just had my back has been big for me,” he said.
MPJ tried to leave his distractions behind in the Nuggets win on Saturday, where he scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds.
Porter Jr.’s teammate and reigning Finals MVP Nikola Jokic told reporters, “Hopefully he’s going to find peace and be in a good spot mentally”.
READ MORE: NBA World Reacts to D’Angelo Russell’s Nightmare Game 1 vs Nuggets
