(06-04-2021, 10:26 AM)dirkfansince1998 Wrote: This...Lillard, McCollum and Powell starting next to him. Nurkic is solid in the paint but just as bad as KP on the perimeter. With Simmons, Anthony and Kanter of the bench. RoCo can cover a lot of ground and rotates all over the place but he is the only plus defender in the rotation.
I 100% agree with the gist of your post, but totally disagree with your take on Nurkic. He IS a PLUS defender....problem is he played only 880 mins in the regular season and sat 2,581 mins.
In the 173 mins Nurkic played against DEN in the playoffs, POR outscored DEN by 12.9. In the 125 mins Nurkic sat POR was outscored by DEN by 18.9 (!!!).
If Nurkic could have played more mins (out for some foul trouble), I think POR could have won that series.