When center Yusuf Nurkic arrived at the Moda Center Thursday night prior to his
debut in front of his new home crowd, the 7-footer from Bosnia and Herzegovina
wore a t-shirt screen printed with the face of his girlfriend, Amina, along with
text reading “If You Can Read This You’re Too Close. He Has A Girlfriend.” And
when one considers Nurkic’s performance in Thursday night’s versus the Oklahoma
City Thunder in front of a national television audience, it stands to reason
that he’d have a few new suitors in Rip City.
In his fifth game as a Trail Blazer and his first at the Moda Center, Nurkic
finished with 18 points, 12 rebounds, six assists and five steals, a stat line
never put up in franchise history, in just under 38 minutes to help the Trail
Blazers defeat the Thunder 114-109. Nurkic also added two steals to top off his
Moda Center debut in front of a sellout crowd of 19,875.
“I feel great to be here, excited every day to spent with those guys in this
city,” said Nurkic after his first game in Portland. “They give me a lot of
opportunity when I came here, so I just try to play and have fun. I know who I
am… I know I’m going to be on the court. I just go there and play.”
Which he’s done a great job of doing since the Trail Blazers acquired the center
in his third season prior to the trade deadline along with a 2017 first round
pick from Denver in exchange for Mason Plumlee, a 2018 second round pick and
cash considerations. In his first five games with Portland, four of those being
starts, Nurkic is averaging 14.0 points on 58 percent shooting, 8.6 rebounds,
3.8 assists, 1.8 blocks and 1.8 steals in 29.8 minutes, all while give the Trail
Blazers a post presence on both ends of the floor that they’ve been lacking for
the last two seasons.
“A guy that can get the ball on the block, he can pass from the block and he can
really score on the block,” said Damian Lillard of his new starting center.
“Good skills and good feel for the game. That gives us an opportunity to pass
and cut. He’s hitting guys when they cut and when it’s one-on-one, he’s scoring.
Catching it in the middle of the defense and you can trust his basketball IQ.
Late in the game, I’m comfortable throwing that pass to him knowing that he can
see the skip pass and he can finish the ball different ways. And on the
defensive end, guys have to bang against him. That takes a lot of energy out to
have to bang with him on both ends of the floor. So I think those are some of
the things that he’s brought to the game that we haven’t had.”
They’re also the kind of skills that Trail Blazers fans tend to revere. Few
types of players draw more affection in Rip City than hard-nosed bigs who like
to operate in the painted area on both offense and defense, which just about
encapsulates Nurkic’s style of play. And while he was already receiving
accolades from Trail Blazers’ fans for his play prior to his Moda Center debut
— getting two fake teeth knocked out versus the Raptors in Toronto and then
subsequently returning to finish out game earned Nurkic near instant credibility
in Rip City — his performance in Thursday night’s win might have very well
cemented his status as a fan favorite in his fledgling days as a Trail Blazer.
“I love, man. My last three years I was playing in kind of half arena, so now
it’s all about fans,” said Nurkic. “You got out there, see them, it’s a sixth
man still with you, so I enjoy. I can’t wait to make them feel amazing.”
What might be the most exciting thing for Trail Blazers’ fans, not to mention
his teammates and coaches, is how well Nurkic has played despite joining the
team less than three weeks ago and not yet being completely in shape due to
playing infrequently in his final months with the Nuggets. Once he gets up to
speed with both the playbook and his conditioning, Portland’s chances of making
a playoff push in the final month and a half of the regular season increases
dramatically.
“I think it’s pretty obvious, (Nurkic) has a good basketball sense, a feel for
the game,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. “When we go through our
offense, he’s picking up that pretty quickly. He’s good out of timeouts. But I
think more than anything else, you can tell he has a good sense of the game.
When you have that, I think the integration goes a little bit better.”
Nurkic isn’t likely to put up franchise-first stat line in every game, and
perhaps opposing teams learn how to better contain him once they have enough
film to really scout how he’s being utilized in Stotts’ system, but after his
first five games as a Trail Blazer, fans have good reason to pay close
attention, even if his girlfriend would prefer you do so from distance.
Player: Damian Lillard
Player: Jusuf Nurkic
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