J-Speaks: Major Loss In Big-Time Win for the Portland Trail Blazers

On Tuesday night, the Portland Trail Blazers earned a big-time win at home versus the Brooklyn Nets, clinching a playoff spot. There was no celebrating after the victory as the current No. 3 Seed in stacked Western Conference sustained a serious loss to a key member of their squad. 

In the Trail Blazers (46-27) 148-144 double-overtime win versus the Nets (38-37), they lost their starting center Jusuf Nurkic, who had 32 points, 16 rebounds, five assists and four blocks suffered a devastating lower leg injury in the second overtime. 

While going for an offensive rebound while jumping for an offensive rebound, Nurkic came down awkwardly on his left leg while getting tangled amongst a few bodies under the basket. 

After the Bosnian native hit the ground in serious pain, the Nets players around him saw the severity of the injury he sustained and sprinted away in absolute disgust. 

There was a collective hush by the 20,188 in attendance at the Moda Center in Portland, OR as the Trail Blazers medical personnel rushed to the floor to attend to Nurkic. A stretcher was immediately called and with assistance from his teammates in All-Star Damian Lillard, Rodney Hood and Al-Farouq Aminu, the 7 foot-1 big man was loaded onto the stretcher. 

Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts, whose team improved to 4-2 in overtime this season called the 24-year-old Bosnian native’s injury after the game “Devastating.” 

Coach Stotts also said that he was taken to a local hospital but gave no further update about the state of Nurkic’s injury. 

According to ESPN, Nurkic suffered compound fractures to the tibia and fibula of his lower left leg and his 2018-19 season is done.  

The Trail Blazers are already without starting shooting guard CJ McCollum, who suffered a pulled muscle in the back of his left knee in the team’s 108-103 loss at the San Antonio Spurs last Saturday evening and is day-to-day. 

“Seeing something like that happen to him personally, you never want to see that with your friend or teammate, and then especially as a player, you don’t see anyone have to go through that and it’s also going to be hard on our team, you know,” Lillard, who had his third straight double-double of 31 points and 12 assists said after the victory about the loss of Nurkic.

“CJ is already out, now (Nurkic) him having a tough injury. So, everyway you look at it, it was a blow. It felt like it after the game.” 

Coach Stotts said on Monday that McCollum will not accompany the Trail Blazers on their four-game road trip but he is doing well in his recovery and hopes to be back in time for the playoffs in three weeks.  

“He’s progressing fine,” he said. “He will not go on the road trip. He will stay back and rehab and get some court work back here.” 

This is not the first time that Lillard has had experienced this. He said after the game that this moment reminded him of what happened to All-Star swingman Paul George of the Oklahoma City Thunder when he suffered a serious leg injury in the Team USA exhibition game in Las Vegas, NV in the summer of 2014. 

It also is similar to the heartbreaking ankle injury Boston Celtics’ All-Star swingman Gordon Hayward sustained on opening night of last season at the Cleveland Cavaliers. 

Numerous players, as expected, quickly expressed messages of support via social media after seeing the extent of Nurkic’s injury. 

“Hate this part of the game. Prayers up for Nurkic!,” 13-time All-Star guard of the Miami Heat Dwyane Wade tweeted. 

“Never, never give up, my man Jusuf Nurkic…I know it’s hard…but you’ll come back to play…I’ll wait for you!!!” Los Angeles Clippers forward Danilo Gallinari tweeted. 

Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts called Nurkic’s injury after the game, “Devastating,” while also describing the entire locker room after the game as “quiet.” 

Reserve second-year big man Zach Collins said the mood of the locker room was like they lost and fellow reserve big man Enes Kanter said the team held a moment of silence for Nurkic following the game. 

“Nobody could really say anything after the game,” Kanter, who had 12 points and 10 boards off the bench versus the Nets said after the game, adding, “It’s tough man. I mean, seeing one of your brothers goes down like that, I mean, I just don’t know what to say.”

“I’m just going to go home and pray for him. This is bigger than basketball. We clinched the playoff spot but we can’t even celebrate. He was a big part of our family. Not our team, our family and I just don’t know what to say, man. It’s definitely tough, but I know with his mentality he’s definitely going to come back strong.” 

To put into perspective how close Nurkic and his teammates are with one another off the court, ESPN NBA reporter Royce Young said that randomly Nurkic came Lillard’s home the other day to see his son because they have become so close. 

One team that understands what Kanter said after the game is the Nets. Back in November, reserve swingman Caris LeVert at the Minnesota Timberwolves was carried off the Target Center floor with towels over his leg in what was thought to be a major leg injury. 

LeVert was able to return after a 42-game absence on Feb. 8 after going through rigorous rehabilitation on what eventually was diagnosed as a dislocation in his foot. 

The entire Nets team came over to Nurkic to wish him well as he exited the court on a stretcher. 

“That’s what our guys are talking about in the locker room right now,” a very sad Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson said to the media about Nurkic’s injury. “They’re not talking about the game or the loss. You just pray that it’s not a long-term thing and he can bounce back but it just takes the wind out of yourself; it’s just not the same and like I said, we’ve been through it, so it’s tough--tough for the crowd, tough for everybody.”  

Besides the personal loss of Nurkic, the Trail Blazers said goodbye for this season to a player that was their third leading scorer behind Lillard and McCollum of 15.4 points and was their leading rebounder at 10.3 in the 71 games he played this season. 

Beyond the numbers, Nurkic provided a toughness on both ends of the floor for the Trail Blazers to where when he set screens on opposing players, they felt it and it gave Lillard, McCollum, Hood and Seth Curry to make open perimeter shots or drives to the basket. 

The good news if there is any for the Trail Blazers is that they have options to go to at the center position. Kanter, whose been averaging 10.4 points and 7.1 rebounds since coming over to the Trail Blazers after being waived by the Knicks back in February will likely become the starting center in place of Nurkic. Behind him will be Collins and Meyers Leonard, who had fallen out of the rotation since the addition of Kanter to the roster. 

The bad news is neither of them bring the aforementioned physical presence that Nurkic did. While Kanter has brought scoring and rebounding on both ends, he simply has been one of the poorest defensive players in the league. 

Is Collins ready to for heavy minutes where he will be counted on to produce and is Leonard, who as mentioned earlier has been out of the regular rotation ready to perform if called upon? 

These are the questions that are staring the now No. 3 Seeded Trail Blazers right in their face as they begin a four-game road trip, stopping at the Chicago Bulls (21-54) on Wednesday night, who originally drafted Nurkic in 2014. The Trail Blazers will then play at the Atlanta Hawks (27-48), Detroit Pistons (37-37) and Minnesota Timberwolves (33-41). Their final five games of this regular season consists of a tilt versus the Memphis Grizzlies (30-44) on Apr. 3; a home-and-home set with the No. 2 Seedin the West Denver Nuggets (50-23) on Apr. 5 on ESPN and then on Apr. 7. They will be at the Los Angeles Lakers (33-41) two nights later and finish the regular season on the back end of a back-to-back versus the Sacramento Kings (37-37). 

On paper, the Trail Blazers, who have won four consecutive games fighting for homecourt advantage in the opening round of the playoffs that is two weeks away from this weekend should go 6-3. However, as we have seen in recent days as the 2018-19 NBA regular-season is winding down, no game is guaranteed. 

What is also not guaranteed is a lengthy NBA career. Nurkic’s injury is a reminder of some of the big men in the history of the Trail Blazers whose promising career has been derailed by a serious lower body injury. 

Foot injuries and surgeries limited Hall of Famer Bill Walton, who led “Rip City” to their first and only championship over fellow Hall of Famer Julius “Dr. J.” Erving and the Philadelphia 76ers in 1977 in six games and helped the Boston Celtics to their 16^th title defeating the Houston Rockets and eventual Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon also in six games. In a career where he averaged 13.3 points, 10.5 rebounds and 2.2 blocks on 52.1 percent from the field, he only played in 468 out of 1,066 regular season games, which averages out to just 43.9 percent. 

Foot injuries Sam Bowie, the No. 2 overall pick in 1984 out of the University of Kentucky by the Trail Blazers seemed like a cannot miss prospect but a serious leg injury in the 1985-86 season, similar to the one Nurkic sustained and many other injuries in that same leg cut short his time with the team and he was never the same in his subsequent combined six seasons with the then New Jersey Nets, even though he averaged 12.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.6 blocks and the Lakers. Knee injuries also cut short the NBA career of former No. 2 overall pick by the Trail Blazers in 2007 center Greg Oden out of Ohio State University. 

The one good thing that Nurkic has in his favor is medical advances give him a chance to come back better than ever from an injury like the one he sustained on Monday night. 

It will not be an easy road back though for him and he can look at George and Hayward as examples. It took George two years to be back to his old form that made him an All-Star and Hayward is going through that this season. 

Monday night was a great example of how the fortunes for a team and a player can change in the blink of an eye. The Portland Trail Blazers instead of quietly celebrating clinching their sixth consecutive playoff appearance with their double-overtime win versus the Nets were mourning the loss of their teammate Jusuf Nurkic to a devastating knee injury. Not only is his NBA career up in the air if he can comeback but the hopes of having home court advantage in the First-Round, let alone making it past the opening round are in serious jeopardy, especially after their opening round four-game sweep at the hands of All-Star Anthony Davis and the No. 6 New Orleans Pelicans last spring. 

The Trail Blazers prospects for this postseason and next season completely changed with the loss of Nurkic, an all too familiar feeling that the fans of “Rip City” and their current face of the franchise have come to know all too well. 

“Every little thing about the game and about the NBA season and NBA career, it’s fragile,” Lillard said. “You can be on a team one day, gone the next. You can be healthy one day, injured the next. Have a job one day, fired the next. It’s a lot of things about the game that’s fragile and that’s one of them; it’s one of the more unfortunate ones.”

The hope is that Nurkic’s career will not meet the same heart-breaking fate that Walton’s, Bowie’s, and Oden’s did.

Information, statistics, and quotations are courtesy of 3/26/19 1 a.m. edition of ESPN’s “Sportscenter” from Los Angeles, CA with Neil Everett and Stan Verrett, with report from Royce Young; 3/26/19 ESPN news crawl; www.espn.com/nba/game/recap?gameid=401071779;  https://www.nba.com/games/20190325/BKNPOR#/boxscore/recap; www.espn.com/nba/standings;  3/26/19 www.espn.com story, via “The Associated Press,” “Blazers Lose Nurkic To Severe Leg Injury, Edge Nets in 2 OTs;” 3/26/19 www.espn.com story, “Blazers’ Nurkic Suffers Compound Leg Fractures,” by Royce Young; https://www.nba.com/games/20190327/PORCHI#/preview; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Walton; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Oden#Professional_career; https://en.m.wikipedia/wiki/Sam_Bowie#NBA_career; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caris_LeVert#2018-19_season; and https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/bowiesa01/html.