Canzano: Jusuf Nurkic’s leg injury is bigger than a Trail Blazers curse

You’re forgiven if you thought about Sam Bowie’s broken leg on Monday night. Or Greg Oden’s knee. Or Bill Walton’s foot. But maybe we should stop right there for a moment.

Jusuf Nurkic jumped for a rebound in double overtime.

When the Trail Blazers center came down he suffered a horrendous injury -- compound fractures to the tibia and fibula of his lower left leg. Play stopped. The game clock froze: 2:22. And anyone who has watched Nurkic play this season eventually understood when he didn’t get up something was terribly wrong.

A stretcher came out.

A season moved on.

If you haven’t seen the replay, don’t. It’s horrific and won’t help explain a thing.

The temptation today will be to classify this NBA franchise as cursed. It’s had a run of injuries over the years. But you shouldn’t.

It’s true that Joel Pryzbilla and Damon Stoudamire ruptured their patellar tendons. And that Wesley Matthews’ achilles tendon detached. Also, that Darius Miles was cut down by knee issues and that Moe Harkless is still trying to escape his own.

It’s true, too that, one-time coach Nate McMillan even ruptured an achilles, and spent time in a walking boot.

But what we’re really talking about here are people. Most of them good ones, by all accounts. That’s easy to forget when we’re consumed with victories, the race in the Western Conference, and the fate of the franchise. “Nurk” -- signed for $48 million last summer -- wasn’t just having a great season, he was re-inventing himself.

But as teammate Enes Kanter told reporters, "This is way bigger than basketball.”

The new guy spoke for the city.

On a night in which the Blazers clinched a playoff position and won their 46th game, we were all reminded how fragile everything is. Also, how much true teammates care for each other. Also, that basketball isn’t all there is.

Kanter, signed just last month, stood in the locker room talking about Nurkic as if he were a brother. Coach Terry Stotts called the injury, “devastating.” And Damian Lillard told The Oregonian’s Joe Freeman a story about Nurkic stopping by after practice to hold his son.

“He just wanted to hold the baby,” Lillard said.

It’s now time for a city to hold the big man.

Nurkic is 24. He will have a surgery and there will be a long recovery. But I’m less interested in the basketball part now than I am in seeing a fan base put its arms around the “Bosnian Beast.”

He worked hard.

He was playing well.

But the eyes and voices of his teammates say so much more. And here’s hoping that Nurkic recovers and has a long career. Beyond that, that he knows how much support he has in Portland.

I’ve always said this city is different than a lot of places.

Those who were in the building when Oden fractured his patella remember seeing him carted off, despondent. He was never the same. Bowie broke his left tibia in his second season, then a year later, he went up for a jump hook and fractured his right tibia.

Bowie compared it to having someone take an ax to his shin bone. And some witnesses at Memorial Coliseum will tell you it sounded like a tree falling.

The point here isn’t to lament a long list of unfortunate Portland injuries, piling Nurkic on the hard-luck heap. But rather to hope that we can see him for the person that he is. Like Kanter said, this isn’t really about basketball anymore.

I spoke to Bowie a few years ago. He was a middle-aged man living in Lexington, Kentucky.

“I have three children,” Bowie told me. “I feel like no one has been blessed like Sam Bowie."

He raised those kids. He saved his money. He got into horse racing and made a life.

Naturally, Bowie wished he could have stayed healthy and won a championship for Portland. But his memories were laced with an interesting and important thread -- one that still weaves the fabric of the Blazers fan base.

“When I think of Portland,” Bowie said, “I don’t think about the injuries, I think about all the support I got.”

That doesn’t sound much like a curse at all.

https://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/...ury-is-bigger-than-a-trail-blazers-curse.html

 

Not only that, wasn't that like the 2nd or 3rd major injury for Greg?