From Reddit (Stats before the Kings game) It's obvious how much of a defensive impact Nurkic has on the game, and when he is rolling on both ends of the court this team is extremely hard to beat. However, i dont think people actually realize how valuable he has been this season - I came across some absurd numbers while surfing bball reference, and they really opened my eyes to Nurk fever. This season, Nurkic Leads the team in Defensive Win Shares, and has the same number of Offensive WS as CJ. Has the best defensive Box Plus/minus by a landslide at 3.4, and posts the second best Total BPM of 4.4 (Cj lands at -.4) The most alarming numbers come from a stat tracker i LOVE called on/off, which measures the net impact players have by calculating their team's offensive and defensive productivity when that player is on the court, compared to when he is on the bench. According to the data listed - The team scores 119.8 points per 100 possessions while Nurkic is on the court, which drops to 106.4 while he isnt playing. 119.8 is also the highest offensive rating on the entire team (He must be doing a lot more for the offense than his standard 14/10 statline suggests). Opposing teams score more efficiently against all of our starters... Except for Nurkic. Yup, Nurkic is the only Blazer starter who is calculated as a net positive for our defense. Now, we all know Aminu is a solid defender, and his #'s are likely skewed due to playing alongside net negative defenders.. HOWEVER, what is extremely telling is that we know Nurkic deals with the same circumstances, and yet he still manages to make other teams less efficient while playing with bad defenders. Pretty impressive. The Blazers team on/off #'s show that, if you isolate any combination of 2 players who have played on the court together this season (Dame and Cj, or Nurk and Harkless, or Leonard+Aminu, etc) out of all the duo's Nurkic is a member of every single top ranked combination in terms of points scored versus points given up. There isn't a single 2 man combo that excludes Nurk that is better than one with him. Nurk is the man, what a steal on that contract! Happy New year rip city
He have a big game. Ppl on this forum start to create a hate for cj. CJ still the second best player. Nurkic is improving and have potential to be, but not for now
It's not a knock on CJ - if we can get him back into his normal shooting percentage from deep he's as deadly as scorer as anyone. But Nurkic has the ability to do what he did tonight - own both ends of the floor.
I'm not surprised at the defensive numbers - but I am at the offensive numbers. There are so many nights Nurk seems like an afterthought on offense.
Naw, he's a better player. CJ is a heck of a scorer, and mid range assassin though. It doesn't really matter who's 2nd or 3rd. The big three HAVE to be good every night, because the bench just isn't good enough to give them a consistant effort.
It's been pretty obvious all season long. I'm just wondering how long it takes for the oblivious media to catch on. Especially the national idiots, who still pretty much exclusively refer to Portland as "Dame and CJ" or "led by the explosive backcourt", if they refer to us at all
when you look at how big an impact Nurk had on Portland's defense last season, I think a case could be made Nurkic was the 2nd best player last season as well. Even If he wasn't better than CJ, he still had a bigger positive impact
He usually goes silent during the season unless there’s a trade, or some other announcement to make. What I really enjoy is not seeing him behind the basket at home games.