NBA All-Star Devin Booker proves indispensable for Team USA
Phoenix Suns All-Star Devin Booker plays multiple roles for Team USA and is looking to win his second consecutive Olympic gold medal in Paris this summer.
Phoenix Suns center Jusuf Nurkic appears to have lost weight, looks healthier, and may have developed a three-point shot for new head coach Mike Budenholzer.
Recent videos posted to his Instagram story seem to show that the center has gotten slimmer, but still maintained the figure and physique of an NBA center. The internet took notice, and the videos also show him working on a three-point shot:
Nurkic’s efforts to develop a three-point shot stalled last season under then-Suns head coach Frank Vogel. In the 2022-23 season with the Portland Trail Blazers, Nurkic hit 36.1% of his three-point shots, the highest rate he’s ever shot from behind in a 37-game season.
The challenge, however, was to achieve this in an entire season, with Nurkic missing 30 games in the 2022-23 season.
Three-point shot comes back down to earth
In fact, he played the entire season last season in his first year with the Suns (missing only six games), but his three-point shooting percentage dropped to 24.4%.
As a result, he averaged the fewest points per game (10.9) since his third year in the NBA in 2016-17. Meanwhile, Nurkic posted a career-high field goal percentage (51%) in seasons where he played 56+ games. A three-pointer would do wonders for his offensive game.
Nurkic averaged 11 rebounds per game (top seven in basketball), four assists per game, 1.1 steals per game and 1.1 blocks per game.
Evan Sidery of Forbes had reported that Nurkic underwent a “transformation” in the offseason, where he slimmed down and developed his three-point shot. Sidery posted a video on X of a seemingly slimmed-down Nurkic sinking threes:
Nurkic’s current Instagram story confirms that things are apparently continuing like this.
As Atlanta’s head coach, Budenholzer reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 2015 with an All-Star stretch-5 center in Al Horford as his best player. As Milwaukee’s head coach, he reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 2019 with a stretch-5 center in Brook Lopez, who made 36.5% of his long-range shots.
He also won the final there in 2021, with Lopez playing the same role and hitting 33.8% of his shots from downtown.
Horford only grabbed 7.2 rebounds per game with Budenholzer in the 2014-15 season, the lowest of his career to that point (in seasons with 12 or more games played). Lopez only grabbed 4.9 and 5 rebounds per game in the 2018-19 and 2020-21 seasons, respectively. They clearly played a different role for those teams than Nurkic did for Vogel last season.
However, Horford weighs 240 pounds. Lopez weighs 282. Nurkic played at 290 last year, so his weight loss could be intentional to create a body that will allow him to play the center role that Budenholzer likes to play.
Because Nurkic spends more time on the perimeter, he can also better support the offense when called upon, as he is one of the best passing centers in the league and averaged the fifth-most assists per game (4) of all centers in over 46 games played last year.
With only two other centers on the roster, Mason Plumlee and Bol Bol, Nurkic is expected to start at center for the Suns again for a consecutive season. However, that specific center role may not look the same as it did when Vogel was in charge.
