Michael Porter Jr. takes hammer to rumors about Russell Westbrook ruining Nuggets’ locker room

The Denver Nuggets will look a bit different this season after making a flurry of moves over the summer to help improve their team. One of the moves was trading Michael Porter Jr. to the Brooklyn Nets for Cam Johnson. They also decided not to bring Russell Westbrook back, as he’s still looking to see where he might play this season.

The Nuggets had a good season last year, but there were also times when rumors came out that made it seem like everything wasn’t good. A rumor that caught the attention of many was Westbrook ruining the locker room, which some players came out and immediately denied was true.

Though Porter is on a different team now, he spoke about those rumors and also denied that Westbrook was a problem.

“The things that came out were normal things that happen within an NBA season,” Porter said on the Justin Laboy show. “I don’t know who leaked some of the stuff in the locker room. I don’t know if it was one of the coaches… But it was a little strange because the things that came out—like, yeah— Teammates aren’t going to see eye to eye. They’re going to get into it. It was little stuff, though.

“Russ—he’s a real positive dude, for sure.”

It seems as if the rift in the locker room was normal stuff, and whatever they said about Westbrook was blown out of proportion.

Michael Porter Jr. describes playing with Russell Westbrook

Despite the noise from the outside, it looks like Porter and the rest of the Nuggets team enjoyed playing with Westbrook

“When he came over with us—he came in with some great energy,” Porter said. “He really bought into the system. He was cheering people on. But it’s an 82-game season, so obviously there’s going to be highs and lows. Any player on the team—not just Russ— We were all kind of, at points in the season, tripping about minutes, tripping about this, tripping about that. So it was normal things through an 82-game season. But me and Russ had a good relationship. I looked up to Russ in a lot of ways.”

Westbrook has had a great career in the league, being on championship-caliber teams and also winning an MVP of his own. At this point in his career, he could be looked at as a key player off the bench, and that could be enough to help a team compete.