Jusuf Nurkic remains the make-or-break piece of this Suns team

Three games into the 2024-25 campaign, it’s already clear that the make-or-break piece of this Phoenix Suns team isn’t new head coach Mike Budenholzer, or point guard Tyus Jones, or even the Big 3 as they try to find the right balance between three stars capable of going off for 30 points on any given night. Same as last year, the make-or-break piece is Jusuf Nurkic.

Relying on a conundrum at the center spot isn’t anything new in Phoenix. For three years straight, Deandre Ayton was the big question mark who could elevate the Suns to championship-caliber when he was on…or completely sink their title aspirations when he was disengaged.

Trading him for Jusuf Nurkic swapped an inflated contract and sense of role for more team-friendly ones, but even if it’s unfair to pin the successes and failures of a team on one player, the question marks were all too familiar.

That was on display last year too. Nurkic remains an elite screen-setter and rebounder, and in the games where he was good, he made the Suns legitimately scary. But he also came with a set of shortcomings on the defensive end, he couldn’t space the floor (24.4 percent from 3), and his struggles with finishing around the rim limited his effectiveness in the pick-and-roll.

Three games into the season, we’ve already seen the two opposite ends of the Jusuf Nurkic spectrum. Against the LA Clippers, Nurk struggled to stay on the court against Ivica Zubac and Tyronn Lue’s small-ball lineups, and Mike Budenholzer ultimately went small too, swapping out Nurkic for Royce O’Neale, at which point Phoenix ripped off an 11-0 run to eventually force overtime.

The next game against the Los Angeles Lakers, Nurkic struggled to stay on the court again, with turnovers and missed shots piling up during Phoenix’s disastrous second- and third-quarter stretches that ultimately cost them the game.

Over his first two games, Nurkic only scored 15 points combined, with only 6 assists to 8 turnovers. He shot 3-for-10 overall, and he was averaging just 20 minutes per game.

In Nurk’s defense, he was only able to get one preseason game under his belt because of a dislocated left middle finger, and he’s lamented how much he hates playing with a finger splint. But no matter how you slice it, it felt like an “unplayable” asteroid was hurtling toward the Valley, ready to make the Nurkosaurus extinct.

But then, in the unlikeliest of circumstances — facing a Dallas Mavericks team coming off an NBA Finals run, while the Suns were on the second night of a back-to-back — Jusuf Nurkic silenced his critics for at least one night, putting forth the kind of performance that can make Phoenix legitimately dangerous when it appears.

“I gotta be better,” Nurkic said. “I have all the support I need from coaches and the organization. Just trying to fit in. Didn’t play as many games as I wish in preseason, but it’s not perfect. I feel like sometimes I’m just not aggressive as I should [be] and overpassing and try to fit in in the system. But it’s no excuse, man. I gotta be better, and I think that’s a good step tonight.”

Jusuf Nurkic bounces back, but concerns remain

In Phoenix’s home opener Saturday night, a 114-102 win over the Mavs, Jusuf Nurkic put up 18 points and 14 rebounds while shooting 7-of-12 from the floor. It was the type of bounce-back performance that felt unfathomable just 24 hours earlier.

“He was great,” Budenholzer said. “His physicality in the paint, his rebounding, defense, everything. So it was good, I think. He’s a great teammate, he’s a competitor. I think he wanted to come back tonight and have that kind of positive impact for us, and he did it in a big way.”

Although Nurkic got off to a shaky start with a few turnovers and missed shots, there was one stretch in the second quarter where he scored 12 straight points for the Suns. A Jusuf Nurkic post-up won’t often be Phoenix’s preferred action on offense, but that run was an example of the Bosnian Beast bully ball that he can unleash when he’s locked in or has a size advantage.

“I felt like they was disrespecting me in a way because I was last game just not as aggressive,” Nurkic said. “I know I can score the ball, especially in the post, and they wanna just let me play. I think that [Devin Booker] and Tyus [Jones] and coach just let me play, so I was taking advantage of my size and try to be just aggressive as I could.”

That inside-out approach was a drastic departure from the first two games, where 7 of his 10 shots came from beyond the 3-point line. Nurkic worked on his 3-point shot all summer on Budenholzer’s instruction, but he has to make some of them for that stretch-5 component to move the needle for Phoenix’s high-powered offense.

Nurk went 0-for-2 against the Mavs, putting him at 1-for-9 on the season. But unlike the first two games, he was establishing himself inside and actually finishing around the basket.

“I like that he kept it simple, most of his points were in the paint,” Kevin Durant said. “Getting the stuff around the paint, being aggressive to score and finish, and he was great tonight. He kinda got us going there in the first half.”

It’s not often that Jusuf Nurkic will get his team going, since that team has the likes of Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal on it. And that’s okay! The Suns don’t need him to do a ton outside of set good screens, finish around the basket, control the boards, make good reads as a playmaker, just be competitive on defense and maybe knock down the occasional 3.

But a few of those have proven to be problem areas for Nurk, and not just during his time in Phoenix. According to Cleaning The Glass, Nurkic shot 60 percent at the rim last year, which ranked in the 15th percentile among centers. He’s never shot better than 63 percent at the rim, and he’s never ranked higher than the 34th percentile at his position in rim accuracy.

Every now and then, he’ll throw up an attempt in the paint that’s borderline upsetting:

But the biggest issue to start the season has been Nurk breathing life into a turnover problem that the Suns are hoping is dead and buried. Adding the two point guards who have jostled for the league’s best assist-to-turnover ratio over the last half-decade helps, but through three games, Nurkic has committed a team-high 13 turnovers, including 5 more against Dallas.

Outside of high-usage bigs like Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid or Domantas Sabonis, no center should be committing that many turnovers. Before the Suns’ impressive 11-turnover performance, Budenholzer spoke on how they could fix that issue, and his words rang true for the Suns’ starting center in particular.

“We’ve gotta be probably more cognizant of just making good decisions, good reads, maybe not trying to put it into small cracks,” Budenholzer said. “Sometimes just, really, unforced turnovers, if I’m honest. So I think it just takes a mental discipline, a mental toughness to think about 48 minutes of good decisions, smart decisions, but still being aggressive and still trying to get your teammates’ shots and still trying to play with the pass.”

The Suns have been talking about their tendency to make mistakes going for the “home run play” since last year, and because Nurkic is a passing big, he’s frequently an example of that. Some of these passes are downright sloppy or poor decisions, but they’re also a byproduct of building chemistry with his guards on when to finish out a dribble handoff, when to backdoor cut, and when Nurk should hold onto the ball if the backdoor feed isn’t there:

Going from an untenable 22 turnovers against the Lakers to just 11 against the Mavericks was a step in the right direction. And although Nurkic had 5 of those 11 by himself, one of came on an illegal screen — rather than the type of costly live-ball turnover Phoenix needs to avoid — and another came off a rebound he couldn’t secure that technically counted as a turnover.

“He still had five turnovers, but like, those turnovers didn’t feel like it destroyed us, you know?” Durant said. “I feel like the stuff in the paint where he’s got four or five guys around and he might lose the ball sometimes, like, that stuff, I feel like we can take a little bit.”

What the Suns can’t take are the lazy, unforced errors that Nurkic took full ownership of during his postgame comments.

“Sometimes I’m just reckless out there, and especially those first two games, I didn’t like the way I was feeling and playing,” Nurkic said. “Even tonight, I think I had five turnovers. That’s way too much. I like it, what I wanna do, but it’s not working, so I have to be better. Plain and simple.”

The Suns shouldn’t completely punt on Jusuf Nurkic’s playmaking, but they might need to tone it down a bit. The rest of the roster made up for Nurk’s mishaps by taking excellent care of the ball on Saturday, but that type of hyper-focused effort hasn’t been the norm for this group. Tyus Jones and Monte Morris can only do so much to fix that problem if Nurkic and the other guys aren’t as diligent on a nightly basis.

“I can’t say who said it, but they said, ‘Even if we have a point guard, we’re gonna turn the ball over!'” Nurkic joked. “But honestly, I think we are more this team than the last game team as far as turnovers. I think we should — and we have all the assets to — be a low-turnover team, especially with Tyus and Monte, just security-wise with the basketball.”

When Nurkic is efficient in the paint, takes care of the boards and protects the basketball, the Suns inch closer to the fully realized version of themselves, which could be downright scary under Budenholzer. But when Nurk is sloppy with the ball, struggles in the paint and lets his defensive deficiencies shine through, he becomes unplayable, at which point Bud’s options are Mason Plumlee, a rookie in Oso Ighodaro, or going small like he did in the first two games.

Once again, the center spot is the make-or-break question mark for Phoenix’s championship hopes, and the answer usually comes with an exclamation mark. Whether it’s a good one or a bad one can change on a nightly basis, and barring an unlikely trade, everyone should probably get used to that being the Suns’ reality.