Nurkic as Rip City’s second star
For the last three years, the Portland Trail Blazers have been Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum’s team. When Jusuf Nurkic first arrived, he provided a boost to the star-studded backcourt. He projected to be a potential third star.
Now, he may prove better as the team’s definitive second option – at least for the short term. Where Nurkic is having one of the best seasons of his career, McCollum is having one of his worst. His rough start is becoming an altogether disappointing season for a player that regularly fights to be in the All-Star conversation.
McCollum is most effective as a scorer and shot-maker. Right now, he isn’t making his shots, posting a career-low .330 percentage from deep. The Athletic’s Jason Quick recently asked Head Coach Terry Stotts about McCollum’s shooting woes and lesser shooting this season. After Stotts said that he thought McCollum was giving good effort, they had this exchange (subscription required):
"“[Jason Quick]: So the saying goes, “If scorers aren’t scoring the ball they have to find a way to impact the game in other areas.” Do you feel like he is impacting the game in other areas? [Terry Stotts]: [Five-second pause] Sure. [JQ]: Which areas do you feel he is making an impact? [TS]: I’m not going down this line with you.”"
Stotts didn’t seem to have an answer for how McCollum had been impacting the game beyond his shooting ability. Of course, he creates gravity with his reputation alone to make offense easier to come by for his teammates, but if his shooting woes continue, this gravity will lessen – especially if Portland makes their way into the postseason.
McCollum currently holds a -0.6 box plus-minus, his worst in five years.
Nurkic, instead, is a clear threat down low in a variety of matchups. He tore apart Golden State’s small-ball center in Draymond Green and Sacramento’s bigger, more traditional one in Willie Cauley-Stein just the same. Nurkic allows the Blazers to both be a high-powered offense and a team that can hang defensively.
As of now, Nurkic averages 11.4 shots per game while McCollum averages 18.1. I would like to see these numbers get closer together and for Stotts to experiment with Nurkic surpassing McCollum’s amount of shot attempts. Over the December 27 stretch, Nurkic has averaged 14.2 attempts.
So much of this, however, is based on whether Nurkic can play the type of minutes that would make him a true second option and potential star for a team. Right now, it’s unclear if he can do that consistently.
If he proves able, I think the Blazers may be best served trying to rely more heavily on him for offensive production while trusting he will continue performing defensively.
CJ as a sixth man
If Nurkic can play bigger minutes, the Blazers could potentially benefit by shifting around their rotation so McCollum comes off the bench.
In his place, Seth Curry would start. Portland then retains a similar type of look with an offensive-heavy backcourt (with Curry shooting much better from deep than McCollum this year) while having more space to find opportunities for Nurkic.
Stotts could have McCollum come in around the six-minute mark, subbing out Curry when Evan Turner takes Maurice Harkless‘s spot. Then, McCollum can play in some of the spaces Curry and Nik Stauskas regularly get minutes. McCollum then acts as Turner’s number-one option at receiver, while also being able to take control of the offense when nothing is working.
In this type of scenario, McCollum would close games in place of Curry.
The logic in not starting McCollum is that the Blazers would be able to jump out to bigger leads by giving some of those first quarter CJ possessions to Nurkic and keep those leads by putting McCollum in more second-unit lineups to keep their foot on the gas.
Although there was a lot of emphasis from the coaching staff on playing Dame and CJ together more often, this was predicated on McCollum playing like he did last season. He isn’t.