Jusuf Nurkic was not a happy camper during the tail-end of his Denver Nuggets days. He had grown unhappy with the changing of his role under head coach Mike Malone, who relegated him to the bench late in the 2015-16 season.

Nurkic got the chance to start the 2016-17 season, but the fact that he didn't play the fourth quarter in the first game of the season despite playing well showed him that his situation was still not right.

“In the first game, I only played three quarters,” Nurkić said to Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated. “I had 23 points and 9 rebounds. I’m playing a good game, we’re winning and I’m not playing in the fourth quarter? From that point, I could kind of see that something was wrong.”

After experimenting with the combination of Nurkic and Nikola Jokic, Malone eventually opted to start Jokic over Nurkic by December 2016, which resulted in Nurkic and his agent sending a second trade request to the team. He was dealt to the Portland Trail Blazers prior to that season’s trade deadline.

Malone was put in quite a tough situation in terms of trying to find a way to play two talented big men. But he made his choice by playing Jokic over Nurkic in crunch time and eventually deciding to build the team around Jokic, which has turned out to be the right decision.

That was obviously quite a frustrating time in Nurkic's career, but it worked out well for him in the end as he now gets to play all the fourth quarters he wants in Portland.