Blazers fans constantly yell at Jusuf Nurkic to dunk the ball more when he’s under the basket. After looking at his dunking numbers from last season, those complaints are certainly justified.
Every Blazers fan who watched the team play last year yelled at Jusuf Nurkic at least one time to dunk the ball.
As a 7-foot, 280-pound center, very few players can keep Nurkic away from the the rim when he gets the ball within a few feet. Still, he would find himself under the hoop with a physically inferior defender to move and chose to flip up a layup instead of dunking it.
Nurkic attempted 515 shots in the restricted area in 2017-2018 – only 62 of those were dunks. On the non-dunk attempts in that zone, he made 55.8%; he made 95.2% of his dunks.
Comparatively, pick-and-roll machines Clint Capela and Steven Adams dunked 213 and 150 times last season, respectively.
The same people yelling at the big man to slam it were the ones screaming in excitement when he finally did so. About once every other game, Nurkic threw down an authoritative dunk that energized the whole crowd, no matter how mad they were at his soft interior play leading up to that moment.
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The dunks boosted Nurkic’s confidence, possibly feeding off the crowd’s energy too. His averages notably improved in games he dunked versus games he didn’t.
- Games Nurkic dunked: 15.9 points, 9.3 rebounds, 1.5 blocks, 53.9% FG.
- Games Nurkic didn’t dunk: 11.4 points, 7.9 rebounds, 1.2 blocks, 45.6% FG.
- Season averages: 14.3 points, 9.0 rebounds, 1.4 blocks, 50.5% FG.
Most importantly, his dunks fueled the team as a whole. In the 44 games he threw down at least one slam, the Blazers went 28-16, a winning percentage of 63.6%. On the season, the team had a 59.8% winning percentage.
In the 12 games he recorded multiple dunks, Portland’s winning percentage jumped to 75% (9-3 record).
These multi-dunk outings were against stiff competition at the center position. Nurkic was defended by Hassan Whiteside, Steven Adams , Clint Capela, or DeAndre Jordan in half of the multi-dunk games.
The Blazers guards hold the key to pushing Nurkic past this mental barrier and enabling the team to benefit from his big dunks.
They need to find him under the hoop on pick-and-rolls for uncontested slams. About 90% of Nurkic’s dunks were assisted on, meaning he doesn’t create dunk opportunities for himself frequently.
An easy way to supply the center with dunking opportunities after setting a screen is with alley-oops. Damian Lillard, who assisted on 62.3% of Nurk’s dunks, only threw two successful alley-oops to him all season.
Dunks shouldn’t account for 6% of a 7-footers total shot attempts. He got the memo at the end of the season – 19 dunks over the last 16 games – but he reverted to his old self in the playoffs with three dunks over 94 minutes of play.
For him to get past this mental block, he’ll need uncontested dunk attempts on a consistent basis to start the 2018-2019 season.
The best way to supply those is for him to cut harder on pick-and-rolls and for Lillard to exercise more patience on the roll. This forces opponents to commit to double-teaming Lillard and leave Nurkic open in the restricted area for an alley-oop or dunk of some kind.