If you’ve done your best to keep up with everything to do with the Portland Trail Blazers and the NBA restart this month, then you probably noticed a few comments from Jusuf Nurkic on Sunday about his role on the team. Specifically, you may have noticed what he said about his passing, borrowing a phrase from former Nuggets teammate Nikola Jokic and Lakers legend Magic Johnson.
“They say an attendance makes two people happy,” Nurkic said. “So that’s how I grow up.”
Nurkic’s attendance numbers have increased since they joined the Blazers. In Denver, Nurkic never had a season where he averaged more than 1.9 assists per game. During the 2018-19 season in Portland, he increased that number to 3.2 assists. It was good for seventh place in the league between centers and solidified him as a great man you can trust with the ball in his hands.
There are a lot of things the Blazers have missed with Nurkic out of the lineup: pick-and-roll competition, stellar defense, and more. But one aspect of his game that will be highly appreciated on his return is his vision and ability to distribute like a great man.
With Nurkic as the starting center last year, the offense ran like a well-oiled machine. The Blazers were third in points for every 100 possessions with 114.7 points per game, while they had an offensive rating of 113.7, also good for the third. The offensive opened for Portland, and led to one of his best seasons in recent memory.
Nurkic had an attendance rate of almost 18% in the 2018-19 season. Among the centers that played significant minutes and more than 50 games last season, he sits comfortably in the top 15. He can connect with his teammates on a wide variety of passes.
I think of all the videos I’ve used in an article on Nurkic, this is by far my favorite. It shows how the Blazers’ offense was fully unlocked with the Bosnian Beast on the ground. It floats a feathery pass to Al-Farouq Aminu by cutting at the baseline (I wrote about a player who could profit from that last week), gives Damian Lillard a cross pass by three, and deftly places a gift and perfect delivery. -Go bounce pass to Lillard, all in the first eight minutes of the game.
This video of Coach Daniel (I recommend his videos) shows just how diverse Nurkic’s repertoire has become. His ability to operate as a focal point on offense has been key, as the video shows him throwing passes from a variety of locations. Whether it’s a pass to a cutter from the top of the key or the perfect jump pass from the elbow to the corner, Nurkic rarely plays the wrong game.
Nurkic’s game is a significant improvement on who has started in his place. Hassan Whiteside, while doing other things well, has not helped the Blazers maintain the same production they got with Nurkic. They still have one of the top 10 offenses in the league (they’re ninth in points for every 100 possessions and offensive rank), but the ball hasn’t moved as efficiently with Whiteside instead of Nurkic.
Whiteside has averaged 1.2 assists this season, with an attendance rate of 6.0%. The Blazers are the last in assists, averaging just over 20 per game. Towards the beginning of the year, it was questionable whether they would go as high as 20. This is not all Whiteside’s fault; Portland’s offensive style doesn’t require a lot of assists and last year with Nurkic they only averaged 23 assists per game anyway. But the gap between Nurkic and Whiteside as pins is significant enough that reinserting Nurkic instantly helps keep the ball moving.
Whiteside turnovers generally don’t look like the video above. Most of his turnovers come from lost balls or offensive fouls. But that is in part because the Blazers don’t trust him as a facilitator like they do with Nurkic. Whiteside struggles to make the easy pass to Lillard (which, to be fair, could be more of a miscommunication than anything), while Nurkic is able to beautifully float the balls in the right place. Nurkic has become a game maker that Whiteside simply will never be.
But this is not an article about the things Whiteside can’t do; it is about Nurkic and his ability to provide something that has been missing throughout the season. The Bosnian Beast will surely be able to anchor Portland’s defense while setting the highest screen for Lillard and McCollum on the other end, but the pass is what I look forward to the most. If Nurkic’s ability to see the floor is close to what it was last year, then he will do much more than just two people happy with his assists.
