The “Point Nurkic” experiment has seemingly ended for Jusuf Nurkic and the Trailblazers. It was fun for a while right after he got traded, helping to build that Nurkic vs. Jokic storyline, but I think Portland decided they wanted the ball in Lillard’s and McCollum’s hands. All the time.
And that’s okay. Nurkic can pass, but it’s not his greatest attribute; he turns it over about as often as he finds the cutter. He’s better suited to other tasks, like getting rebounds, rolling to the rim, and throwing up wild-looking hooks that sometimes go in but most of the time don’t. Hard to make those things when you don’t always look at the rim, I guess.
Nurkic had 20 tonight, all of them inside the paint. That’s another experiment for him that has ended for the most part: the “shoot long twos” experiment. There was even talk of him extending his range to the three-point line, but that has not come to pass. He saw what happened to Brook Lopez after he added a three-ball; he got traded and his minutes got slashed. Can’t let that happen!