Jontay Porter, Chuma Okeke are risks worth taking for the Pacers

Some players coming off injuries should scare teams, but Jontay Porter, Chuma Okeke are risks the Pacers should consider when the NBA draft rolls around.

People often struggle with injuries with regards to the draft and how they should impact a prospect’s evaluation. Some look at injuries through a more pessimistic lens and others believe in the phenomenon that is modern medicine. I fall into the latter camp.

Unless a player has a serious injury history, a frame highly susceptible to injuries+injury history or one horrendous injury (Achilles, neck, back, etc.), I am inclined to not let injuries impact my evaluation of a player much. Think of it this way: if I one prospect with an injury is far better than another prospect without an injury, I would rather bet on the better prospect fully recovering than the worse prospect becoming better than the better prospect. If my explanation was confusing: try this:

Player A is your favorite prospect in the draft. You don’t think anyone is near him in terms of his expected outcome. However, player A recently tore his ACL. Player B is a prospect you think is solid, but on a different planet from player B.

Assuming your evaluations and gauges of upside is correct, prospect A will be a better NBA player than prospect B, considering everyone is healthy. Would you rather bet on prospect B unexpectedly becoming better than prospect A, or prospect A recovering from his non-career threatening injury and being as good you think he can be?

This is where I am with two injury-riddled prospects, Jontay Porter and Chuma Okeke, and why I remain high on both compared to consensus. I don’t have a finalized ranking, but Porter is a top five seven range player and Okeke is a mid-teens range prospect for me.

Before we dive into these prospects, I want to speak about their respective injuries. Remember, I am no doctor and my assessment of these injuries is based on historical precedents and my expert medical knowledge gleaned from the depths of Google.

More from 8 Points, 9 Seconds

• 2 Studs, 1 dud from gut-wrenching Indiana Pacers loss to Charlotte Hornets
• Handing out early-season grades for Pacers’ Bruce Brown, Obi Toppin
• 3 positives, 2 negatives in Pacers In-Season Tournament win vs. Cavaliers
• 2 positives, 3 negatives from first week of Indiana Pacers basketball
• Should Isaiah Jackson’s days with Indiana Pacers be numbered?

I am not concerned about Chuma Okeke’s injury and as such it does not factor into my ranking of him. On March 31st against North Carolina, Okeke tore his ACL and had successful surgery to repair it. In 2019, ACL injuries are typically not career-altering and most players fully recover from them, assuming they have ample time to recover. As long as Okeke’s future team is patient with him, he should be back on the court at 100% sometime next season.

With Porter, questions about his injury are real. Like Okeke, his injury is with his ACL, but he tore the same ACL twice. The Porter family has been plagued with injuries: his brother Michael has had serious back and neck issues for years and more recently, drop foot.

His sister Cierra had to retire from basketball because of knee injuries and his sister Bri has had multiple ACL injuries and ligament damage on both knees. There’s a serious possibility Porter never plays and if he does, is never the same player he was in his lone year in Columbia.

I choose to remain hopeful and have faith in science, ranking Porter high for the reasons I outlined above. Another piece I feel is significant and something I’ll touch on later is Porter’s body fat. Since the 2018 draft combine, Porter dropped over five percent body fat, from 13.85 percent to 8.5 percent. I believe in Porter’s worth ethic, talent and modern medicine enough to keep him ranked highly.

With the injury preface out of the way, let’s dive into these two fantastic prospects, beginning with Chuma Okeke.