This was the type of performance Kristaps Porzingis and his team had been waiting for.

Waylaid by surgery rehab for the first month of the season and then snakebitten by a series of minor injuries, the Celtics big man delivered his most comprehensive outing yet Tuesday night in a road win over the shorthanded Nuggets.

Porzingis scored 25 points, including 15 in an impressive first quarter, and grabbed 11 rebounds — six defensive, five offensive — as Boston pulled away late in Denver to win 118-106. His first double-double of the season also featured three assists, two steals and a stonewall block on veteran DeAndre Jordan that helped spark the Celtics’ fourth-quarter surge.

Up one at the time, Boston began a 15-0 run a minute later that put the game out of reach.

Importantly, the Nuggets were playing without under-the-weather superstar Nikola Jokic, who’s in contention for his fourth NBA MVP Award in five years. Jokic’s unexpected absence — he was scratched an hour before tipoff because of a worsening illness — made Porzingis’ assignment much easier.

But despite that drop in difficulty, the Celtics came away encouraged by Porzingis’ play. Head coach Joe Mazzulla said in his postgame news conference that Porzingis “was big-time … on both ends of the floor” and “the most physical” he’d been since his return from surgery.

Teammates agreed.

“I think those guys did a great job making plays, and especially KP,” Jayson Tatum told reporters in Denver. “I think that the force that he played with (Tuesday night) on both ends, that block on (Jordan), and just the force he played with on the offensive end — drawing fouls, attacking the mismatches, getting offensive rebounds. He had a couple put-back dunks, I think. That really just helped us separate the game and change the momentum. So the way he played (Tuesday) was much-needed.”

Porzingis went 7-for-7 inside the restricted area and drew four fouls (6-for-8 on free throws). He was able to increase his physicality without being reckless, as evidenced by his low foul count (one) and turnover total (one) over his 34 minutes. In Sunday’s loss to Oklahoma City, during which the Celtics scored just 27 second-half points, Porzingis committed five fouls and turned the ball over four times.

“He looked really good (against Denver),” Jrue Holiday told reporters. “… Obviously, when KP’s playing well, we’re pretty tough to beat.”

He’s still not back to peak form, Porzingis admitted. He told reporters after Tuesday’s win that he’s “80-85%” of the way there. He still needs to “calibrate” his shot — his effective field-goal percentage is down more than six points from last season, and he went 2-for-11 outside the restricted area against Denver — and prove he can stay healthy. Before returning to action in last Friday’s win at Houston, he missed four straight games with the ankle sprain he suffered on Christmas.

But Porzingis believes he’ll soon be the floor-tilting difference-maker he was during his excellent debut season in Boston.

“Obviously, it doesn’t sound good, but I have to play my way back into good shape, and then I can exert more energy on things,” he told reporters. “But I know this is what everybody expects from me. This is what I showed last season, and now I’m just working my way back up. Honestly, (Tuesday) was, in my opinion, one of the first games where I felt like I’m getting close to feeling healthy, feeling good and getting back in good shape. …

“I know that moment is coming where everything will start clicking and I’ll play really high-level basketball.”

Porzingis sees a shift coming for the team as a whole, too.

Though two of the teams the Celtics beat during their 3-1 Western Conference road trip were missing key players, Boston also played two of the four games without Jaylen Brown, one without Porzingis and one without Derrick White, who sat out the Denver W with an illness. Thirty-seven games in, the Celtics have had their entire rotation available just twice (and in one of those contests, White injured his foot and missed the second half).

Mazzulla’s preferred starting five has played just 103 minutes together all season, and Boston has struggled in those minutes, with opponents outscoring that group by 11.9 points per 100 possessions. Even though the Celtics’ roster is nearly identical to last year’s championship squad, that lack of game-to-game cohesiveness has made finding a rhythm tricky, especially with Porzingis still ramping up and opponents drawing up new ways to defend them.

The Celtics’ top eight players have missed twice as many games (56) as they had at this point last season (28). Five of them have missed at least six, and all but Payton Pritchard (zero DNPs) have sat out at least two.

“I think it’s (affected us) a decent amount,” Mazzulla told reporters before Tuesday’s game. “I think when you take a look at just the rhythm and the reps that we’ve gotten, we’re kind of almost at the beginning of training camp with that starting five as to what the reps look like. You can’t underestimate how that impacts each other. Not positively or negatively; it just does.”

There’s no guarantee the Celtics will be healthier moving forward than they have been thus far, and they’ll still want to manage the workloads of their older and more fragile players. But Porzingis’ progress is a promising development as Boston — which, at 27-10, entered Wednesday five games back of first-place Cleveland in the Eastern Conference standings — looks to reassert itself as a championship front-runner.

“I didn’t think we were, like, excellent (Tuesday night), but I think we’re going to turn the corner and go on a nice run,” Porzingis told reporters. “I really believe so. … We’ll get some consistency now, I believe.”