Jusuf Nurkic sat basically the whole 4th quarter tonight. I don’t really see why the Blazers coaching staff would do that. Ed Davis, his replacement, is more of a “solid” player, I guess. If you can live with the lack of offense he provides. But the real reason you don’t bench Nurk is because last time Nurk got benched, he sulked until he got traded. The deal with him is that you take the rather high highs with the pretty low lows.
If he gets into Sulk Mode again, look out. His emotionality was a big part of the Blazers success last year, and I bet he can be a big part of their undoing this year if he tries hard enough at it. A few bad games followed by one where he played well but got benched anyway is getting into the danger zone. The Blazers need to pretty much let him touch the ball on every possession next game and try and get him pumped again. I know a suggest that remedy for a lot of NBA-related problems, but I bet it would seriously work this time.