With the Blazers’ season on the line (well, partially on the line, since they needed two lose two straight in order to miss the playoffs), Jusuf Nurkic unleashed his inner Bosnian Beast with a supremely gritty, supremely BOSNIAN display of scoring, rebound, passing, and overall domination. And he did it right after finding out that his grandmother, whom he loved dearly, had just passed away.
Most of us can relate to the feelings of emptiness and grief that overtake us when somebody close to us dies. And most of us, in those situations, would not be able to effectively play a game of basketball (even if we were good at basketball, which not all of us are [I’m pretty good at midrange jumpers though]). But Nurkic seemed to take that grief into his hands and mold it into a desire to honor his Baba through the game of basketball. And it resulted in a 20/20 game when he should have been at home in Bosnia grieving with his family.
So major props to Nurkic for the playoff-clinching performance in the face of personal tragedy, and for providing evidence that there are eight stages of grief, rather than seven. And the eighth stage is “provide clutch scoring and rebounding in the NBA’s first-ever playoff play-in game.”