Michael Porter Jr. doesn’t have a whole lot on Trae Young, who drops 30 points regularly, or Brandon Roy, who was one of the most electric player in the league over the second half of the aughts and is the former high school coach of Porter.
But in getting to the NBA Finals, the Denver Nuggets guard now has at least one thing on the two.
When asked who has offered him advice during a pre-Finals press conference, Porter mentioned both of his longtime friends
“Me and Trae Young have talked a lot. He’s jealous, since I’m in the Finals and he’s only made the Eastern Conference Finals,” Porter said with a smile. “We were talking about that in LA, he came to our last game in LA.”
Porter added while laughing: “Then Brandon Roy, my coach from high school, he called me the other day and he pretty much was just criticizing everything that I was doing. I think he’s jealous too because he never made it to the Finals.
“He’s seen how my game has evolved since my injuries and things, so he gives me great advice. A good mentor to me.”
The clip starts around the 3:51 mark:
Porter and Young became close friends as they grew up as elite high school basketball prospects together. The two played on the same Nike EYBL team and were on the 2016 FIBA Americas U18 team in Chile. The Athletic did a bit of a deep dive into their relationship back in 2019.
Porter was widely regarded as a top-two prospect in the class of 2017, while Young was ranked in the 20-30 range on the 247Sports Composite and the outlet’s rankings.
Meanwhile, Roy coached Porter at Nathan Hale High School (Seattle, Wash.). With the star forward and former NBA coach, the team went undefeated and won the championship, as Roy was named the Naismith National Coach of the Year and Porter enrolled at Missouri. Roy now coaches at his alma mater, Garfield High School (Seattle, Wash).