Okay that about settles it. We have all "No's" other than the OP. No Nurk is not the best player on the Blazers. No Nurk is not the best defensive player or even center in the league. Yes Nurk is good and the Blazers are lucky to have him. We all hope he continues to get better.
Do you watch all the other teams play as much as you watch the Blazers? Otherwise, your opinion doesn’t hold a lot of weight.
Lol. Of course my opinion doesn’t carry any weight! I’m just a random poster on the internet. I’m still right though.
I simply cannot like that comment enough. I can also respect your opinion about you being right. But i am the one who is right.
Gobert, Embiid, Whiteside, Nurkic, Anthony Davis (I'm not sure he’s a center though), I think Nurkic is up there with the best defensive bigs in the NBA. Is he the best? Who knows? He’s up there though he does affect the game a lot. Edit: I think Al Horford should get a mention here too.
Nurkic ranks 71st among all players. But also Defense is the team part of the game. So very tough to use any kind of stat for a defensive ranking. I can always make a case for why a player should or should not be ranked where they are or above another player.
Nurk is at or near the top in just about every defensive measure available. DRPM - 5th in the league and 5th among centers. DBPM - 5th in the league DRTG - 15th in the league In terms of rim protection he's also near the top in terms of shots defended and % affected: https://stats.nba.com/players/defense-dash-lt6/
Nurkic won't get a single vote for Defensive Player of the Year, nor will he come close to making an All-Defense Team. Some of that is because he's hiding in Portland but there's no way you can justify every voter overlooking him.
I basically agree with you, but that is also part of the problem with how DPoY and the ADT are chosen, even the player awards are mostly popularity contests. The one thing I'd say though, is very few teams see such a drastic difference in their defense because of one player. Even with Zach who's a very good defender, there is a pretty notable difference defensively when Nurk isn't out there.
Nurk by himself took our defense from historically bad to top-10 last season and got exactly one vote in the DPOY voting. He didn't get a single vote for one of the All-Defensive teams. Nurk has been awesome defensively but there are centers that straight scare guards from even attempting to get into the paint when they're on the floor. Nurk doesn't have that respect yet. Until that happens it's hard to get recognition as a center for defense.
Not gonna argue that at all. He is good and makes the Blazers better for sure. But even those have him no better than 5th. I would say yes he is in the top 5 for sure. But saying he is even only fifth best might be wrong? I stand by my feeling on this that defensive stats absolutely suck at telling you how a player really effects a game. Because defense is so dependent on the players around you.
Nurk is getting in the heads of guys this year, you can tell there are a lot of guys who really don't like him. Scared of him? maybe not on the level of Gobert, or Davis or one of those but it's quite fun to watch how guys like Simmons only really talk crap to him when he's facing the other way lol.
