Zach Lowe Intrigued By Blazers, But Not Jusuf Nurkic

After calling the Portland Trail Blazers’ roster “blah” during the preseason, ESPN Analyst Zach Lowe is now intrigued after watching the team’s first win against the Sacramento Kings.

Joined by fellow ESPNer Chiney Ogwumike on the Lowe Post, Lowe waxed lyrical about the Blazers after the opening night performance.

I described the Blazers roster as blah on this podcast, which was met with disagreement from Blazers fans and people within the Blazers. And really by blah I wasn’t talking stylistically, I was just saying it looks like a 500 team to me.

What I heard from within Portland after I said that, was “just wait to you see us play, because I know the names aren’t super sexy but we wanted to really surround Dame with athleticism and speed, and we think we’ve done that”.

And I also think people were way to quick to just write off Chauncey Billups as a coach after the first year.

I watched their first game and I was like, look I don’t know what their record is going to be but I can see the vision, because Simons is super dynamic and can lead the bench when Dame is out and then they have all these big long wings. And when you play Dame, a center and then in between you have three of Josh Hart, whose just one on four and somehow succeeds every single time at doing it, Jerami Grant, Justise Winslow, Nassir Little, GPII didn’t even play in the first game and the Sharpe kid is going to be a rollercoaster ride that I’m buying the ticket for every single night. That’s a lot of length and speed and umph. They played Winslow at center for a lot of the crunch time of that game. You can see at least the vision of how they want to play and I came out of that game, again one game against the Kings, very intrigued.

Lowe however did wince when Ogwumike claimed to be a fan of Jusuf Nurkic.

I’m anti-intrigued by Jusuf Nurkic and I’m tired of watching him miss layups and bunnies around the rim and grunt very loudly while doing so.

You can listen to the discussion here 45 minutes in.