What a concept! Portland is 5-1 when Nurk has at least five assists this season. During “Nurk fever” they were also 5-1 when he had at least five. Last year there were only two (!) games where he had five or more assists. They won both. Against New Orleans in the playoffs he had four assists, TOTAL. Coincidence? I think not. And I think the coaches finally realize it. He’s had 14 assists the last two games, but more importantly the offense is being run through him more often. Reminds me of when he first got here. Only took a year and a half. Better late than never I guess.
Yeah but then he started thinking he was Larry Bird and tried too many difficult passes. He just needs to keep it simple. On another note can Dame please cut down on his low bounce passes into Nurk? Good things do not happen when 7 footers have to bend down to get the ball.
I liked the action out of that play where CJ brought the ball up and Nurk and Dame were on the elbows. CJ passed to Nurk and then went to screen for Dame. They overplayed Dame thinking he was going to come off the screen for a 3 and CJ slipped it and got a layup (I think it might have been an And-1 too). There are so many options out of that. If they switch then Dame can just dive to the basket for the layup instead. I don't know if you saw but during one of the timeouts Stotts stopped Nurk and was talking to him like he did something wrong. The next dead ball is when he pulled Nurk out of the game. I hope he's not in the dog house.
I don’t mind the difficult passes. Or should I say, I accept it comes with the territory. Look at Jokic. He averages 3 turnovers a game. But you live with it because of how much it opens up the offense. I’ll never understand why they ever went away from playing through Nurk. It’s so obvious it makes the offense better, even with the occasional crazy pass.
Not surprising, He saves his “teaching moments” for Nurk since he’s too scared to ever confront CJ. Going to try and ignore the negative though.
I missed that (probably because I watch it delayed & skip all the commercials/time outs). Thanks for pointing that out. It will be interesting to see what happens the next few games
high post basketball has always been a fairly effective offense, and that high post concept can slide down to either block as well. , I'm old enough to remember Bill Walton in the high post in the Jack Ramsey offense, and it was a thing of beauty. Of course Walton came from the Wooden system so he knew how to play in the high post. More recently, Arvydas Sabonis spent a lot of time operating from the high post under Dunleavy. And that's how Jokic and Marc Gasol operate but it requires good off ball action from cutters and screeners. Portland has some of that but I'd question if they would be consistent enough at it to make it effective. Maybe consistent is the wrong word...would they be disciplined enough? That's where Dame and CJ come into the equation. Over the last 4 seasons, whenever Portland encounters any decent defensive resistance, Dame and CJ will revert to the one-on-one stuff and over-dribble, especially CJ , and that tends to freeze-out teammates and stall off-ball motion (with Stotts blessing it apparently). And last season, Turner and Napier joined the traveling one-on-one circus and yuck, was it boring to watch....if I had some extra eyes I would have gouged them out several times when suffering thru that iso-madness Dame is the best Blazer at one-on-one and he will, most times, keep teammates involved. But he isn't Lebron. and when an opposing defense decides to take Dame out of the equation and basically rope-a-dope CJ into going into his dribble-fest, he obliges...and he's not good enough to carry the team like Dame does; and you end up with something like the Pelicans sweeping the Blazers so yeah, having another offensive tool like some high post sets with Nurkic would be good. I'm a little skeptical the team, or the coaches, would believe in it enough to stay with it
I saw Stotts in his ear and I think he was telling him to forget the ref's and focus on position. Of late he and Dame are constantly on the refs in transition. I understand why they are frustrated, but it gets old.
It does seem to depend on the opponent though. GS did not have a center in the game last night. Jerebko is their biggest guy until Cousins is healthy. Nurk had a field day. Although he did miss one badly down the stretch.
Many of us were baffled last year that Stotts wasn't utilizing Nurk's post passing skills in the offense. I can't believe it's taken this long to get back to it.
I used to always hear him say stuff like "you know how I feel about Nurk but I have to give him credit since he played well tonight"
Yeah he's always seemed pretty negative... But not the type of negative where he actually will call out the team for mentality, or challenge Stotts on his coaching issues, or challenge Olshey heavily. It's all "The Blazers didn't win, the Warriors lost"... Yeah, but we didn't lose in Oakland, so that's a win in itself. Or quotes like you said. And then after he finishes, the other two don't acknowledge anything he said and they bring up a facebook comment hahaha. Sigh. We might get a live post-game show going in a year or two once we're bigger and I think we'd get some decent viewership.
The most under used center in the NBA. You mean we got a center that can pass and facilitate plays? Who can shoot and block people out? Na lets just keep chucking it from the cheap seats and see what happens
We really couldn't use Nurk to pass out of the post last year because he was so horrible at post ups. When a guy shoots 42% on post ups, you don't do anything to bend the defense to stop him from shooting them. There are no open lanes, no open men in the corner, nothing. Just 4 teammates watching as a guy fumbles with bad flip shots under the hoop. He passed on 21% of post ups, because there was nobody to pass to. He's shooting 48% on postups this year, and suddenly he looks like we can run the offense through him (at least on the good nights.) He's passing out of the post 28% of the time. Guys are more open because he's a legit threat down there. Somebody over the offseason beat him repeatedly in the head with a chair every time he took one of those finesse flip shots that only work for Zach Randolph. Zbo lived on them because he was too short and unathletic to do anything else much of the time. Get it up quickly and outhustle people if it misses. Nurk has no such limitation, and he's finally realizing it. He's hurrying less to just get it up there, and relying more on his size and strength to take the shot he actually wants--dunks and dives to the rim where his shoulders are square to the basket. He's always been good at those. That is opening up the rest of his offensive game. Nurk is only 24. He's still got a lot to figure out. But I'm really encouraged in the strides he's made this year on offense.
