Cavs: Kevin Porter Jr.’s one-game suspension must be growth moment for him

Cleveland Cavaliers rookie wing Kevin Porter Jr. was reportedly suspended for one game for making contact with an official in Cleveland’s last game against the Dallas Mavericks, and this must be a growth moment for the 19-year-old.

The Cleveland Cavaliers and head coach John Beilein are going to be playing youngsters a bunch in the 2019-20 season, and in coming years. That’s a sensible move with the team rebuilding.

Pieces such as Collin Sexton, who is second on the team in scoring thus far this year with 16.8 points per game (per NBA.com), and young wing Cedi Osman also are going to be getting big minutes.

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Additionally, rookie starting lead guard Darius Garland, along with rookie wings Dylan Windler, who has not played yet due to a reported stress reaction in his left leg, and Kevin Porter Jr., are also going to likely play more and more as time progresses in coming years for the Cavs.

That’s again, a smart outlook for Cleveland and Beilein to have.

That being said, there will be plenty of growing pains for the Cavaliers and their young pieces, and that’s understandable. How players eventually respond over time to mistakes, though, is the key to the growth process for Beilein and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

A player that’s going to have his share of mistakes in his first season, and likely in coming years, is Porter.

The Cavs traded back into the 2019 NBA Draft to grab Porter by reportedly sending four future-second picks and cash considerations at the time to the Detroit Pistons, and Cleveland then grabbed Porter with the 30th pick (the last pick) in the first round.

The rookie wing had an underwhelming season in his one collegiate year at USC by his standards with only 9.5 points per game and him only starting in four of his 22 appearances (per Sports Reference).

With his ability to create separation off-the-bounce, mainly, and with plenty of defensive potential on-ball, he could be a key piece for Beilein and the Cavs in due time, though, as our own Robbie DiPaola detailed.

While Porter has had a fairly unsurprisingly tough start to his rookie year with 5.3 points on an effective field goal shooting clip of just 34.8% in 18.0 minutes per game (per Basketball Reference), he’s shown flashes of his promise for the Cleveland Cavaliers, too, especially when in the open floor.

Unfortunately for Porter, one of the big knocks on him by draft pundits was seemingly that Porter had some maturity issues, and as DiPaola noted, Porter did get suspended for “conduct issues,” at USC, per the Los Angeles Times‘ Brady McCollough.

Now I’m sure Cleveland did their due diligence with KPJ, who seems like a great kid, and is a player that I believe will eventually be one of the Cavs’ key contributors.

Again, though, the maturity concerns seemed to be an issue with him for NBA teams, and that played into an incident in the Cavs’ last game against the Dallas Mavericks, for which Porter ended up getting suspended for one game without pay, which turns out to be against the Boston Celtics on Tuesday.

That has to be a growth moment for Porter, and I believe it will be and he’ll learn from it; the news was announced by the NBA and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted this out, for reference, on it.

Anyway, Porter was suspended one game for contacting an official at the end of the third quarter, and he was seemingly frustrated after not getting a foul call after he really initiated all of the contact going into Mavs star Luka Doncic, who was the primary defender on the play.

Porter ended up putting up an ill-advised driving shot that had little chance of falling instead of maybe pulling back for a more realistic look, and the buzzer sounded.

After that, again, the incident occurred, and Cleveland.com’s Chris Fedor did a good job of explaining the reasoning for the said suspension.

"“Disappointed that a foul wasn’t called, Porter dropped the ball and jogged toward the team’s bench on the opposite end of the court, bumping into veteran referee Bill Spooner. Replays show the contact to Spooner’s shoulder and back that caused him to stumble. He immediately looked back at Porter.”"

Here’s that in real time, via Uproxx and the official clip you can see on NBA.com (h/t Fedor), and this sort of thing, again, has to be a growth moment for Porter where he doesn’t have issues regarding officials and seemingly, frustration, moving forward.

Now could one see this as being incidental?

I guess, but it sure doesn’t look like it, as Porter seemed to be jogging right into Spooner after Porter seemed frustrated after not getting a shooting foul in that instance, and I personally could see, as a rookie, him maybe trying to give Spooner a bit of his mind with that contact.

While this wasn’t exactly the worst thing in the world by KPJ, he clearly did not need to be jogging in Spooner’s exact direction there and he definitely didn’t need to contact him.

I’m really not too concerned about this, and Porter seems like one of the good guys, and I hope he gets more on track on the floor. This does need to be a growth moment for the 19-year-old, either way, and I hope this sort of thing doesn’t put him in Beilein’s dog house.

I don’t think it will, but it didn’t help his case for consistent minutes predominantly backing up Osman when Windler and his sharpshooting comes back from injury.

Perhaps Porter and Windler will play together a bunch this year, anyway, though, or there could be some meaningful minutes with Porter and Alfonzo McKinnie, who could play some more on Tuesday (as Fear The Sword’s Chris Manning suggested), getting run on the floor together.