The Portland Trail Blazers earned one of their most impressive wins of the regular season on Friday, beating the Boston Celtics 109-105 at TD Garden. The win is Portland's fourth in six games, all of which have come without Damian Lillard.
Anfernee Simons continued staking his claim as one of basketball's most intriguing young guards, and C.J. McCollum's 24 points were more than he's scored since returning to the lineup earlier this week after suffering a collapsed right lung on December 3rd. The Blazers' starting backcourt combined for 45 points on 36 shots, draining nine threes combined and largely out-dueling Boston's own two-man hub of scoring and playmaking in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
Jusuf Nurkic was the difference Friday night, though, dropping 29 points, 16 rebounds and seven assists on the Celtics while shooting 9-of-16 from the field en route to a game-high +20 plus-minus. The Bosnian Beast even came up biggest when it mattered most, giving Portland a 105-104 lead that it wouldn't relinquish with 13.1 seconds left after grabbing a loose rebound in traffic and throwing up a difficult hook shot. He iced the game from there, draining a pair of free throws with less than a second remaining after Boston was forced to play the foul game.
“Thirty-eight minutes is a lot for Nurk. It's a lot,” Chauncey Billups said. “It really is. But you look at his numbers, he was unstoppable.”
Nurkic proved too big and too skilled for the Celtics' switching defensive scheme, overwhelming defenders in the post no matter who Ime Udoko threw at him. By the time his season-best performance was finished, Nurkic was ready to call himself the moniker that makes his head coach a legend.
“He told me walking in the locker room he was gonna change his name to ‘Mr. Big Shot,'” Billups, the 2004 NBA Finals MVP with the Detroit Pistons, recalled. “I said, ‘If you keep doing that you can have it.'”
Nurkic has taken full advantage of the Blazers' recent spate of perimeter absences, averaging 17.8 points, 13.6 rebounds and 4.0 assists over the last 10 games—all of which have come since Damian Lillard was sidelined. His +24.5 net rating over that timeframe ranks second on the team, per NBA.com/stats, behind Simons' on-off mark.
Nurkic's future in Portland is very much up in the air. A free agent after this season, he's broadly considered one of the most likely players league-wide to be dealt ahead of the February 10th trade deadline. No matter where he's playing three weeks from now, though, Nurkic—if his recent play proves a harbinger, at least—will continue to establish himself as an impactful two-way performer.
The Blazers, 19-26, remain tenth in the Western Conference, three games behind the Minnesota Timberwolves for the last spot in the play-in tournament.
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