HOUSTON (SportsRadio 610)- Kevin Porter Jr. didn’t have time to celebrate after signing his four-year, $82.5 million extension with the Rockets on Monday. He had to get to the weight room.
“More work gotta be done,” Porter said Monday. “It was a journey, and the journey don't stop here, it just gets bigger.”
Hours after signing a contract that could keep him in Houston through the 2026-2027 season, Porter accurately described his first three NBA seasons as a “roller coaster”. Off-court concerns saw him to slip to 30th in the 2019 draft and 18 months later he was traded by Cleveland to the Rockets for a highly protected second round pick after a locker room incident. The Rockets turned him into a point guard and last season he averaged 15.6 points and 6.2 assists in his first full season playing that position.
“I've always seen my potential, but that's what it's been these past three years, it's just potential and I'm starting to pull everything together,” Porter said.
His time with the Rockets hasn’t been with incident. The team suspended him in January after he left Toyota Center at halftime of a game against the Denver Nuggets following a locker room outburst, but Porter was apologetic after the incident and the team stuck by him. He knocked down a game-winning shot in his first game back from the suspension in Washington and played his best basketball of the season from that point forward.
“I'm so happy for him,” Rockets head coach Stephen Silas said. “Thinking about where he came from when we got him, the conversation we had before he even came him in the G League bubble, him coming up here and having ups and downs and 50-point game and suspension. Everything that we've gone through together, so I'm proud of him.
“This is just the beginning for him being a foundational piece of what we have going on here.”
Porter’s extension kicks in next season and that is the only guaranteed year of the contract which is loaded with incentives that are based on personal and team performance, but if everything goes as planned, the Rockets will have Porter and backcourt mate Jalen Green locked up for the foreseeable future, who was one of the first people to get the news of Porter’s extension.
“Me and him are like brothers,” Porter said. Blood couldn’t make us any closer, so I'm very comfortable sharing my life and my personal with him, and he's congratulated me, he's happy that we're gonna be together for much longer.”
Monday might not have afforded Porter an opportunity to celebrate his new contract with the Rockets, but he certainly understood its significance.
“It's a milestone in my life that I've reached, and it's more motivation to keep going,” He said. “This is the biggest day of my life.”