Jusuf Nurkic did his best to get his team the win against the Bucks, but he was fighting an uhpill battle against the combined efforts of Damian Brickard and C.J. McBrickum (not to mention Pat Brickaughton and Noah Vonafraidtoshoot). Theoretically, a matchup against John Henson and Thon Maker would be the perfect matchup to exploit; Nurkic probably weighs more than those two put together. And, in a sense, it was exploited (Nurkic scored 25 points after all), but it was less by Nurkic going straight at those guys to exploit the size mismatch and more like the Blazers’ offense exploiting the failures of the Bucks’ defense.
What I’m saying is, if Nurkic was going to score fifty at any point this season, it was going to be against the twin stick figures of Henson and Maker. I feel like this is an opportunity was squandered but I’m not sure who squandered it. Was it Nurkic himself, or was it his chucktastic backcourt, or was it Terry Stotts and his failure to draw up a logical gameplan, or was it Ed Davis for stealing eight minutes from Nurkic and making almost no box-score contributions? Maybe we’ll never know.