Zombie It's going to be grim for the next year and a half.

First, the playoffs. We got swept last year with Nurk. Without him and a possibly gimpy CJ, fuck, it's just not looking promising. As tough as the West is, we may get swept again in the first round.

Then Portland is going to suck next year. Nurk won't be 100%, even if he can come back by the All Star break. And will we be rushing to get him back if we aren't close to being in the playoffs? So much of his effectiveness comes from his mobility for his size. This is probably his best case scenario. I don't even want to think about worst case scenarios.

Curry and Hood will be off to greener pastures via free agency. They are just going to be too attractive for competitive teams.

Our big offseason story will likely be whether we re-sign Jake Layman. Ugh. There's just enough season (and suddenly available minutes) left for him to start driving up his value. Meanwhile the West just gets tougher.

We'll get a terrible pick, so there's no solace there.

So in sum, shitty 2019 playoffs, shitty draft, shitty offseason, shitty 2019-20 regular season with us likely missing the 2020 playoffs.

We're a long, long way from me being as optimistic about our team as I was a few hours ago.

Fuck. What a waste of Lillard's prime.

Nurk, Roy, Matthews/LaMarcus, Oden....a team like the Spurs goes 20 years without even one disaster on this scale. Fuck.

Man, I'm seriously wondering if this shit finally broke me and this team.

 

Im devastated by Nurks injury but come on people... be more logical...

We'll make the moves neccessary to remain competitive. Other than the year we finished .500, when have we not? Guys will step up in the absence of others, much as people have done for CJ. We'll have expiring contracts that'll be tradable for a legitimate upgrade. If not, we'll shed a contract and bring back Hood or Curry for the Full MLE.

Nurk doesnt rely on athleticism or quickness. Once he returns, he should be just as effective if not only for some rust. This type of injury usually takes 8-12 months to recover from. So November to March is the timeline. We'll remain competitive in the mean time. Nurks leg should be stronger, and hopefully his mindset will remain steady. With someone like Dame, it should.

We still have Dame leading this franchise, so were in good hands. Let's see how the rest of this year plays out. A 2nd round playoff birth after this adversity would be even more special than before, and it's possible. It was likely all we were looking at this year.

Collins will develop faster given the extra opportunity, we'll likely make a legit upgrade, and Nurk will return all before the 2020 playoffs. KD and Cousins are both extremely likely to leave Golden State, and Houston will be another year older.

Next year is our year.

 

Man, I'd like to believe you are right. But jeez, I just don't see it.

I don't see us winning a first round series with only one rim protector--and Zach Collins is a complete foul magnet. The lane is going to be wide open for long stretches of the game.

Nurk may not be athletic, but he's exceedingly nimble. Or he was. With his size, boy it's going to be tough for him to get back to his old agility. If he does come back next year, he's going to look a lot like Arvydas out there on defense for a while. Teams will carve him up in the pick and roll.

And there's no guarantee he even does come back next season. We've seen what the multi-year drama of big centers with leg issues can be like.

As far as other guys stepping up...I just don't see it. CJ doesn't really have another level he can go to without running his own team. Aminu is who he is. Mo is the definition of inconsistency. I hope Gary Trent can give us something next year.

Maybe this will be akin to the Wes Matthews injury, where the team uses it to overhaul the roster. CJ came out of nowhere after that, and perhaps we can dig up something similar again between Simons and Trent.

Yes, Boogie and Durant will probably leave. That will make 2 other teams better while Golden State probably remains the favorite to win.

Portland just rattled off 13 wins in 17 games, with a lot of those on the road. We were pushing for the 3rd seed. It's going to be a long time until we see that kind of momentum again.

 

Nurk going down like this is definitely a gut punch. But a little perspective if I may . . . who thought we’d be in the playoffs the season after LA left, & giving the defending champs fits in a competitive series? Sure, the odds of winning a playoff series or two this year just took a huge hit. But let’s see who we get matched up against, and if that team has injuries of their own to deal with. We all remember the Clipper series when CP & Blake went down. All we can do is let it play out and hope for the best (If it’s wrong to openly hope for other teams stars to go down, then I don’t want to be right! Not career threatening of course, just enough to put them out vs us)

As far as next season . . . we REALLY don’t know what the roster will even look like, so why assume the worst? We can make moves through the draft, FA, & trades, and continue to develop our young guys. Maybe Simons busts out this summer? Or Collins takes a big step forward? Or we find a diamond in the rough big man like other teams have. D Jordan, Gobert, Whiteside, Jokic, Capella are examples of quality bigs that weren’t drafted until the end of 1st rd, or 2nd rd.

Losing Nurk at this point hurts bad, there’s no way around that. This was starting to feel like a team that has a chance to make a deep playoff run. But this team has a propensity not only for breaking your heart when expectations are high, but also for exceeding expectations when everyone writes them off. Just embrace that we have no idea how this will play out. Who knows, they might surprise you.

 

Nice post. I think this right here is the essence of being a Blazers fan. Thanks man. Stay positive.

 

Blazer for life. Through good times and bad time. No need to get our head down.

 

Come on, next year is NEVER our year. We are just always stuck in this perpetual cycle of mediocre-good, and any time it looks like we might exceed that, disaster strikes. The sooner we accept that, the easier the impending mess of a season will be.

 

This one feels different from the Oden broken patella. We were all sorta resigned to the fact that he was done sooner or later. The break just expedited the process. This feels a bit like Wessy's achilles. Future of the team in limbo and the injury just paved the way for an eventual house clearing. I'm glad Jusuf is on a reasonable contract for a few more years at least.

I wish we had a few more games to see if we can actually develop a viable rotation for the playoffs but it is what it is. Throw all the minutes Zach can handle and see if he can give us something before fouling out. Winning a game or two in the first round will be stretch regardless of matchup.

 

Horrible blow. Nurk was developing into one of the best 5's in the league. I still think we can win a first round series though.

 

He's going to recover just fine, I don't expect there to be any major drop in quality of his performance. Think he'll be back around January, just a feeling though not backed up by any real evidence.

A part of me hopes it can be another Caris LeVert story where it looked much worse than it actually was and he's already back and playing.

 

LeVert did not break two crucial and brittle bones. I'm not expecting Nurk back til the beginning of the 20-21 season.

 

Levert dislocated a foot. Nurk broke two bones. Completely different injury.

 

What? This is the best case of a worse case scenario (I mean, one bone would have been better and NOT compound would've been preferable, but still). Bones heal and heal to be stronger than before. They put a plate in and a rod in and give it some time and bam: Nurk is healed. If this were tendons and ligaments, this could've been career ending. But it's just bone. He'll play next season.

 

We don’t know if it’s a clean break yet. They said compound fracture but probably haven’t tested for ligament damage yet.

 

This team, plus an upgrade, without KD and Cousins on Golden State gives us a chance at the finals. It's easy to be short-sighted after tough breaks (no pun intended).

Saying we should expect devastating, fluke injuries is ridiculous. We had bad luck twice in a row. Before that, we took a risk on two guys with chronic knee issues (Roy and Oden).

Just try to enjoy the rest of the season. Dame's about to pop off, and I feel like we have some role players that'll really step it up. We'll get CJ back and hopefully Collins can play up to his potential and gain some invaluable experience that'll be good in the long run.

 

The location it happened seemed promising in regards to there being no ligament damage.

 

I went to the game with a radiologist. Very slight maybe he hurt his knee or ankle, but most likely not. This was the result that he "wanted" and I'm going with it.

 

Or we trade for Griffin and hes our C until Nurkic comes back.

 

Still gotta make sure blood vessels/arteries/all that junk in there is intact. Guessing he's still in surgery now.

 

It’s shit like this injury that made me take a big step back from sports. I just can’t take it anymore man. Life is already full of pain and disappointment. I don’t need added pain and disappointment. I just feel so bad for the guy. He was busting his ass and really coming into his own. He was killing it last night. I think he was the clear number two on our team. He doesn’t deserve this shit.