Portland Trail Blazers: 5 keys to winning season opener vs. Phoenix Suns

2. Nurkic has to be dominant

When healthy, Jusuf Nurkic can be a dominant force in the paint. Hypothetically, it’s arguable that the Blazers would never have broken even last season and qualified for the playoffs were it not for the arrival of the Bosnian Beast.

Prior to the Nurkic trade, the Blazers ranked 13th in offensive rating at 106.8 and 26th in defensive rating at 108.9. In the 20 games that followed, they ranked sixth in offensive rating at 110.6 and 12th in defensive rating at 105.4.

In addition, Nurkic holds per-36 career averages of 16.0 points, 12.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 2.2 blocks and 1.5 steals. He was never given the opportunity to play a great deal of minutes in his time with the Denver Nuggets, and he was only able to appear in 20 games last season.

This season, Nurkic has the chance to show that he can be a consistently dominant player in more than just the last 20 games of a season. If he’s able to start off strong early against the Suns, I highly doubt many other teams in the NBA will be able to stop him.