I’ve been feeling kind of bad for Jusuf Nurkic lately. He was, for a brief moment, one of the more exciting young players in the league, a cocky and abrasive enforcer who didn’t take crap from anyone. Then it turned out that he was sorta bad on offense, and he got injured, and then Nikola Jokic came in and took all his glory away.
The long road to regaining lost glory begins tonight.
23 points is nothing to sneeze at. Sure, it looks kind of lame when compared against his in-game matchup Anthony Davis’ 50. That’s not his fault. He did the most he could with his opportunities and, you know, I bet he’d score at least 35 if he got the attempts that Davis was allotted. If not 40.
We didn’t get to see much of his “maybe it exists but also maybe not” perimeter game tonight, which is a shame. Going in, I was expecting one, maybe even two jumpers contained within his career-high performance. Nope. Some powerful post moves, though. Those are almost as good. None of this pansy-ass willowy Dirk-esque crap. Nurk is about power. PRIMAL POWER.