yes because bamba isn’t anywhere near Nurkic as a player. You can count on one hand the centers that play 81 games a season. Bigs gets injured, it’s just physics. But he’s also an impact two way player when he’s on the court, so he’s worth the money. Bamba is still closer to a project than an established player.
Of course not...I'm talking centers that have a somewhat reliable post game.. the ones that are only there for defense or put-backs know their place (DeAndre Jordan's of the world). But if you can get relatively easy buckets down low and motivate your big man, it's smart to do so IMO. CJ could be really good at feeding a big man if he wanted to. Unfortunately if Nurk needs to pass out of the post to establish a better position, he wouldn't ever get it back.
well, in another thread...or maybe this one, I posted Nurk's in post-up plays. IIRC, that was around 24-25% of his offense and he was only in the 41st percentile in PPP. I listed several other C's, those that had more than 20% of their offense in post-up, and Nurk was the worst of the bunch in terms of efficiency. But I'll check again: 87th percentile - (Enes Freedom) 84th percentile - Embiid 79th percentile - Jokic, (Aldridge) 74th percentile - Aaron Gordon 64th percentile - Anthony Davis 62nd percentile - Alperen Sengun 61st percentile - Ayton, Robin Lopez 60th percentile - Harrell 58th percentile - Valunciunas, (Kevin Love) 54th percentile - Evan Mobley 45th percentile - Porzingas 44th percentile - Sabonis 42 percentile - Marikief Morris (not a C but a gauge of post-up) 41st percentile - Nurkic 29th percentile - KAT 22nd percentile -Vucevic' not a lot of C's over 20% of their offense from post-up so I'll set the floor at (15%) and put names in (x) He's better in PnR-roll man where he ranks in the 72nd percentile; 27% of his offense: 97th percentile - Marquiss Chriss 95th percentile - Javale McGee 94th percentile - Brandon Clarke 93rd percentile - Mike Muscala, Jaxson Hayes 91st percentile - Herangomez 89th percentile - Hartenstein 87th percentile - Mitchell Robinson 84th percentile - Whiteside, Ayton 82nd percentile - Richaun Holmes 81st percentile - Sabonis 80th percentile - Harrell 78th percentile - Daniel Gafford, Kaminsky 77th percentile - Thomas Bryant, Rudy Gobert 72nd percentile - Nurkic, Deandre Jordan 71st percentile - Robin Lopez 68th percentile - Cousins 66th percentile - Aldridge, Capela 59th percentile - Jakob Poeltl 21st percentile - Vucevic' those two play types account for 52% of Nurk's offense and he's a long ways from elite in either 16% of Nurk's offense come off of cuts and he's in the 35th percentile in that play (Nance 64th percentile; Zeller 77th percentile; Watford 51st percentile) 13% of Nurk's offense is on put-backs and he's 45th percentile (Nance 90th percentile) so, an offensive play rate - percentile ranking looks like 27% of offense - 72nd percentile 25% of offense - 41st percentile 16% of offense - 35th percentile 13% of offense - 45th percentile that's 81% of his offense and his percentiles are not impressive at all. Obviously, there's more context to this. We can try and figure how well the offense works when Nurk is one of the hubs. Better stats guys than me can work on that if they want. But, one thing to keep in mind with Nurk as a hub is that his assist rate is 16.3% while his turnover rate is 16.8%. He is more likley to generate a turnover than an assist. Again, there's a little more context than that because he commits a lot of screen fouls so not all of his turnovers are with-ball turnovers that doesn't mean he's not valuable to Portland though. I think he is quite important. He's the core of the defense; if he wasn't there the Blazers would be historically bad. Further, with Portland's overall roster size they should be a shitty rebounding team but they rank 3rd in the league in defensive rebounding and that's primarily due to Nurk bottom line is I don't think there's any justification there for Nurk to be more involved in the offense, and maybe even some for him being less involved. His role is to defend and rebound and be a presence in the paint on both ends of the floor. If he can't accept that role unless he's featured on offense he becomes a distraction...IMO
agree to disagree...Nurk is critical to our success and the more he's involved the better he plays. Guess I've always had a penchant for rewarding bigs who do the dirty work. Just ask @hoopsjock about my alley-op to him for the RipCity3on3 tournament win, summer 19.
Just tossing this out there on the paywall thing. People bitch about not having quality sports writers here, but then don't want to pay the companies that can hire good sports writers. Seems a little odd to me… If not willing to pay a company to read their content, then i wouldn't bitch much about the writers writing the content. My $.02.
Very well drafted article and certainly shared some insights about Nurk that I wasn’t aware of. This passage caught my attention though: “We are going to try and improve the team as much as possible and we are going to build around you, Dame and CJ, and hopefully, we find a way to do that.” I can understand the desire to keep Dame and Nurk (for their p’n’r chemistry alone) but why was CJ lumped into that core group? Is nine years watching the CJ and Dame backcourt get destroyed defensively not enough? Honestly if this is Cronin’s mindset then we might as well blow the whole thing up. CJ + Dame together (with or without Nurk) are not leading this organization to anything more than more first round playoff exits.
yeah, you absolutely have to consider the injury history when gauging what contract Nurkic is worth in the last 3 seasons, the Blazers have played 195 games. Nurkic played in 91. So he played in 91 and missed 104. In his first 4 seasons, he missed 104 games...that's 26 games a year which is essentially a 3rd of a season when he signed his current contract, it was said to be a bargain. But to this point, he has played in 163 of the 277 games Portland has played during that contract. He has only played in 59% of games. If you pro-rate the missed games, Nurk's 12m/year salary is effectively 20M/year. Even for big men that's excessive. Obviously players miss games, but Nurk misses a lot more than average another possible gauge of his contract: since Nurkic arrived in Portland, Portland's playoff record with a healthy Nurkic is 3-12 (.200). Without him it's 8-11 (.421). Blazers have been boat-raced in the 1st round with Nurkic. Without Nurkic, they made it to the WC finals with a C they paid 650K for a 3rd of a season. Is it reasonable to expect that having Nurkic would have yielded results any better that year?
I know i'm probably in the minority here, but i think Nurk should be re-signed. I hear all the stuff about Myles Turner, but he's got this stress issue in his foot. That's bad news. Feet problems (insert Walton) lead to nothing but trouble. They have a great chance for re-injury, over , and over again. Yes Nurk has an injury background as well, but he has also toughed through a finger issue this year. Something i'm not sure he would have in the past. His maturity is better, all around. I think the Blazers won't find a better talent on the market. He's not that old. Still learning, and the care for his communities welfare is off the charts. If it's true that Nurk may be re-signed, vote me in for approving.
Myles Turner isn't even half the player Nurk is. Some "fans" are absolutely clueless. Nurk is one of the best centers in the league. Sabonis doesn't play defense. Turner gets pushed around. We're extremely lucky to have Nurk and won't be getting anyone better.
I don't think it is OK, but I'm glad you posted the article 'cause I wasn't gonna subscribe so I could read it. So did they really lose any money? OK who bought some Bosnian Beans? I just put in my order.
Another trade that I would try to make right now is Dennis Smith Jr. and either our 2022 second rounder and a future second or if necessary that pick we get back from the Nurk trade to the Rockets for Kevin Porter Jr. I'm pretty sure the second rounders would do it since Houston has been having problems with Porter (suspended for a game a month ago for "poor behavior"). They might even do that trade straight across given that both PGs have similar overall output and the problems the Rockets have had with Porter. I don't know and really don't care much who would be our top-8 immediately after the trades but going into next season we would have Dame, Simmons, Brown, Nas, Bamba, Milton, Watford, Porter and at that point we should use our first rounder to pick up the big available when we pick who is most ready to contribute from day one off of the bench. Hopefully because of Watford's game it's a stretch big. Orlando Robinson from Fresno State is the guy I'd target as of right now. Dude has NBA ready footwork on both ends, good timing blocking shots and a very nice jumper... at almost 22 years old and having started for three seasons at a division one program he just has a great feel for the game.
Nurk goes up against someone a little closer to his size....and got dominated. Nurk - 11 points, 4 rebs, 4 TOs Vuce - 24 points, 14 rebs, 3 assists....on 11-15 shooting.
Of course Watford isn't going to be able to do anything with Vuce, but Nurk did nothing to slow him down either. And Nurk wasn't able to do much against him. It is what it is.
he had five shots. Makes no sense cuz he was backing vucevic down easy. All Vuc did offensively is shoot jumpers. Congrats to him.
the few times we posted nurk, he was really loose with the ball today. dude was giving away live ball turns that they immediately turned to points. it's one bad game in a while. let's hope it's not a sign of things to come.
He also had 6 TO's and 0 assists against Houston. His usage goes up, his TO's go way up.....but yet his efficiency isn't very good.
his A:TO ratio is nearly at 1 this month, which (while bad) isn't terrible for a C, but it's the nature of the turnovers that's infuriating at times. if it's from moving screens, at least they're not live ball ones, but the ones where he just tosses a lazy pass or brings the ball down low to get swiped are really bad.
