By Stefan Djordjevic/ info@eurohoops.net
The Portland Trail Blazers had the misfortune to lose their starting center Jusuf Nurkic to a nasty season-ending injury in March. With that in mind, they’ve made a move in the ongoing free agency and brought over Hassan Whiteside from Miami who will take Nurkic’s place while the latter recovers.
President of Basketball Operations Neil Olshey talked about the trade during the broadcast of the Portland – Detroit Summer League game and revealed that Nurkic probably won’t get back on the court before February 2020:
“It brings a ton of rim protection, paint presence on both ends of the floor, his rebounding. Obviously, Nurk won’t be back probably until sometime in February, maybe. We need to at least hold serve if not make some progress. Hassan’s been a player we’ve coveted. We’ve tried multiple times to acquire him by free agency or trade in the past. We were just fortunate that the way the math worked out on this four-team trade, we were able to get Hassan and secure our paint and have an anchor there until Nurk gets back. And then kind of the same two-headed monster we had last year with Enes Kanter and Nurk. We really want to kinda start playing a little more bully ball in the paint with our bigs.”