Call me crazy, but I see Porter's weaknesses the exact opposite way.
In spite of not having a left hand, in spite of not being overwhelmingly strong or athletic, in spite of not having an elite handle, in spite of having a kind of funky looking jumper with a slow-ish release, etc, Porter dominated Big East play on both ends of the court as a 19 year old sophomore.
It's like, picture you're talking to a person who knows nothing about basketball and you're trying to explain why Kobe is one of the greatest of all time while CJ Miles is a journeyman playing 20 minutes a game for the Cavs. Sure, Kobe's a better passer, has a better handle, and even at the tail end of his career is probably more athletic than Miles. But none of those things really explain the difference between them. Kobe's just a natural...basketball is just woven into his genes at a higher level than for almost anyone else on the planet. Obviously Porter doesn't have much in common with Kobe in terms of his game, but if you ask why Porter was first team All-American, and how he was able to dominate games the way he did, my answer is the same...he's a prodigy. The game just comes naturally to him. When he's playing the game he's not thinking, he's just doing.
I didn't mean to make this a stats oriented post, but one stat in particular stands out to me. In his last 10 games, he averaged 38.1 minutes per game, and exactly 1 turnover per game. And this is as a 19 year old who was the focal point of ever defense every night. And this is in spite of the fact that he shouldered an even larger than usual load on offense over this span, averaging 12.2 shot attempts, 7.1 free throw attempts, and 3.1 assists compared to season averages of 11.3, 5.1, and 2.7. Highlight reels don't really do justice to this sort of thing...from a highlight reel, you can only tell how good a player's good plays were, not how bad their bad plays were. Otto Porter rarely makes the wrong play.
This is the kind of thing that makes me think he's just scratching the surface of his potential. If by the sheer virtue of his basketball playing instincts, without a quick-trigger jumpshot, without a dazzling array of moves off the dribble, without using his left hand, without much muscle on his frame, he's one of the most effective players in college basketball, think how good he could be if he gets a quicker release, improves his handle, develops his left hand and puts on 20 pounds of muscle. And the game comes so naturally to him, and he's still so young that I'm pretty confident he'll be able to do most or all of those things in the next few years. That's the upside I see.
