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Damian Lillard has doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on his commitment to Rip City. Anfernee Simons is a star right now, and the Portland Trail Blazers will pay him like it this summer.
Nassir Little is already entrenched as a long-term building block in Portland, with one more year left on his rookie contract. Josh Hart was a near shoo-in to start or serve as the Blazers' sixth man in 2022-23 even before showing out since being acquired from the New Orleans Pelicans. Justise Winslow, his contract used as salary ballast in a trade his new team made to cut costs and increase flexibility, believes he's finally found his NBA home.
Even after surging into the All-Star break as winners of four straight, playing by far their best basketball of the regular season, the new-look Blazers remain in a state of flux. It's naive to assume their recent success will persist over the season's remainder, let alone continue into next season. Portland still must make significant upgrades to its roster before dreams of contention, and finally has the flexibility—in the form of cap space and potentially a pair of lottery picks—necessary to go out and find them.
Where might the Blazers look for help come summer? Certainly at the wing but also on the interior, where Jusuf Nurkic's foray into free agency looms—one of many reasons why he has so much to prove over the last two months of 2021-22.
1 Blazers player with most to prove after 2022 All-Star break
First thing's first: The only realistic way Portland will have meaningful cap space this summer is if the team moves on from Nurkic. His $18 million cap hold combined with a market-value deal for Simons in restricted free agency would push the Blazers approximately $10 million below the salary cap, before accounting for the non-guaranteed contracts of Eric Bledsoe and Joe Ingles as well as smaller cap holds owed to potentially valuable incumbent free agents like Ben McLemore.
There's a surefire upgrade at center in free agency should Portland clear the financial deck. Deandre Ayton will almost certainly be headed back to the Phoenix Suns on a max-level deal. Otherwise, this year's class of free agent centers is comprised of aging vets and unproven young players likely to come for relatively cheap.
Would the Blazers be interested in Mo Bamba if the Orlando Magic renounce his restricted free agent rights? Surely, but Bamba hasn't shown enough even in a much-improved third season to command a starting spot. Remember, as long as Lillard is in town beyond this season, Portland will be trying to win.
That's why bringing Nurkic back on a multi-year contract with a salary approaching his current one makes most sense for the Blazers. Fortunately for interim general manager Joe Cronin and the front office, Nurkic's performance over the last six weeks makes that prospect much more palatable than it seemed before the New Year.
Nurkic has been Portland's defensive bellwether all season. The Blazers' porous defensive rating dips 8.2 points to league-average with him on the floor, in the 95th percentile league-wide, according to Cleaning the Glass. A deeper dive into the numbers only fortifies the degree of Nurkic's defensive impact. Portland fouls far less, grabs a much higher share of defensive rebounds and forces opponents into 2.5% worse shooting at the rim with him on the floor, typical indicators of a center's positive value defensively.
What's been different of late is that Nurkic's palpable influence has extended to the other end of the floor.
Afforded a steady diet of touches on the block since Lillard was sidelined on December 31st, Nurkic is almost living up to preseason hype of becoming a scoring and playmaking hub from the post. He out-muscled Steven Adams on multiple occasions in a 32-point explosion against the Memphis Grizzlies, and simply proved too big for Anthony Davis time and again versus the Los Angeles Lakers.
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Nurkic's patience and touch as a back-to-basket scorer and pick-and-roll dive man have been gradually improving since the season tipped off. Finally, he's become dangerous enough in scoring situations to regularly draw extra defensive attention, using his underrated passing ability to create open looks for teammates.
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Nurkic is averaging 17.4 points, 12.5 rebounds and 3.4 assists per game on average efficiency since January 3rd. Portland's 111.2 offensive rating with him on the floor during that timeframe dips all the way to 102.9 when he's on the bench, per NBA.com/stats, evidence of Nurkic's strides as a finisher and self-creator nearly as much as it is the lack of proven, quality depth behind him.
This isn't Nurkic's new normal offensively. When Lillard is healthy next season and the Blazers are fighting for playoff positioning, he'll be a distant third in the offensive pecking order at best. It's not like that'd be any different if he was playing elsewhere, either. Effective as Nurkic has been recently, there isn't a team in the league that'd be comfortable making him its clear-cut second option on offense.
But versatility and variability is vital, especially against better defenses with higher stakes at play. If Nurkic is efficient enough down low to sometimes demand double-teams, it'll be worthwhile for Portland to make him a bigger part of the offense going forward than he was over the first couple months of 2021-22. A more intriguing swing factor? The admittedly faint possibility of Nurkic—3-of-4 from deep in his last two games!—becoming a legitimate three-point threat.
Nurkic has done enough in the last 10 weeks to re-cement himself as a possible fixture for the new-look Blazers. If he sustains or builds on that level of play, it will go a long way toward clarifying Portland's decision to re-sign him come July.
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