2022 Champ, Former Lottery Pick, Announces Retirement

One of the most frustrating watches of recent vintage has finally decided to hang up his sneakers for good. To yours truly, at least, it feels like we’ve seen the worst possible outcome for this young man’s career in this timeline. He had all the tools to be special, but motivation and health ultimately seem to have cost him.

Veteran combo forward Otto Porter Jr. is officially calling it a career. After he was cut by the Utah Jazz on Monday, Porter announced in a Jazz press statement that he was retiring. We’ll let him explain himself below.

“For the past 11 years, I had the chance to live my lifelong dream of playing in the NBA,” he said. “That dream was capped by winning an NBA Championship! Unfortunately, my body is not allowing me to play at the level that I expect of myself, and I have therefore decided to retire.”

The Washington Wizards selected Porter with the third pick in the 2013 draft out of Georgetown University. During his Wizards tenure, the 6’8″ vet really showed flashes of being something special. He was an elite athlete with the size and strength to convincingly defend three positions, shooting guard through power forward, the three-point shooting acumen to help his teams stretch the floor, and enough scoring punch that he seemed on the brink of becoming more than a role player. He never quite took off as the third banana alongside All-Star guards John Wall and Bradley Beal, sadly.

After that Washington team’s prime fizzled out, Porter was flipped to the Chicago Bulls in 2019. He had the ceiling to be the best player on those teams, but fitness issues landed him on the IR with alarming frequency, albeit while in the midst of a lucrative four-year, $106.5 million contract. He was traded to the Orlando Magic as part of Chicago’s deal for Nikola Vucevic. He then totally rebuilt his value during a rare healthy (and in-shape!) season for the Golden State Warriors in 2021-22.

Porter proved to be an essential seventh man on a title team. He gave the club shooting and defense off the bench. This proved to be a rare find on a veteran’s minimum deal for an under-30-year-old.

He parlayed that into an immediately bloated new two-year, $12.3 million contract with the Toronto Raptors. Porter instantly returned to his injured ways, playing just eight games in his first season with the club. This year, Toronto finally pulled the rip cord, shipping him out to the Utah Jazz at the trade deadline. He didn’t play a game in Salt Lake City, and that was all she wrote.

In an 11-season NBA career, the 30-year-old played 527 regular season games, posting averages of 10.3 points on .477/.397/.797 shooting splits, 4.9 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.1 steals. He’ll be one of the great what-ifs of recent vintage. He did achieve a good amount, earning a total of $138,816,877 in his career. No, seriously. And that’s just on the court.

But this guy truly had All-Star potential. Oh well. Maybe we’ll see it in the next life.