Trail Blazers Practice Updates on Nurkic, Collins, Harkless

After a 3-game losing streak and falling from 1st to 6th in the standings, the Blazers were back at practice on Tuesday. There were some questions that needed to be answered to hopefully get back to their winning ways. Joe Freeman of The Oregonian relayed some answers for these questions from practice on Tuesday.

On the topic of Jusuf Nurkic’s injury, he participated in practice in non-contact drills and wasn’t listed on the team’s injury report. Nurkic believes he’ll be fine:

“It was kind of nasty,” Nurkic said. “But I’ll be fine.”

Portland’s other main center, Zach Collins, has been struggling lately and a lot of it is due to early foul trouble. Collins has been spending time with former NBA official and current Blazers consultant Don Vaden, who has given the young player some areas to watch:

“The fouls that are away from the rim are the things that I need to clean up,” he said. “If I get six fouls at the rim, I’m not too worried about that. It’s just staying locked in and making sure that you don’t get a lot of ticky-tack fouls that will make you pay in the end.

Finally, Maurice Harkless is progressing enough from injury to possibly lift his minutes restriction:

“We’ve talked about, maybe, after a couple more games, pushing my minutes-restriction,” Harkless said Sunday night. “It’s pretty hard to play that way.”

The Blazers have a tough set of upcoming games with the Magic and Denver Nuggets at home before heading on the road to take on the Spurs.

To read Freeman’s full article click here.