Portland Trail Blazers: 5 bold predictions for 2017-18 NBA season

5. Jusuf Nurkic plays more than 65 games

Just as we have yet to see the Portland Trail Blazers play an entire season with Jusuf Nurkic, we also have yet to see Jusuf Nurkic play anywhere close to an entire season.

That’s right: since coming into the league in 2014, Nurkic has played a total of 159 games, which evens out to 87 missed games — five games over an entire season’s worth of contests. Putting that into a percentage: Nurkic has missed 35.3 percent of the total possible number of games he could have played in his first three seasons (246).

Nurkic has been in the NBA for three seasons, but he’s only played roughly two years worth of games.

This presents an interesting problem for the Portland Trail Blazers, who need a strong inside presence like Nurkic to help anchor the paint on both ends of the floor. If he’s unable to play the majority of the season, the Blazers become a fringe 8-seed.

However, if he plays more than 65 games like I’m predicting, then the Blazers become a contender for the fifth seed in the West.