AS: As things were up in the air after the playoffs and over the summer, how often were you and your teammates talking about what was still possible together? Jusuf Nurkic: During the season, there’s not much time to talk about stuff like that. But in the summer there was a lot of speculation about coach and the team, and what’s going to happen. We didn’t know. And there were just a lot of things that went into the summer. We watched Ed Davis and Shabazz Napier walk away in free agency.
You heard other teams start to say, “Oh, well the Blazers might tank” and stuff like that. I think we knew deep down—me and Dame and C.J., Mo [Harkless], and Chief [Al-Farouq Aminu]—I think we knew that if we stayed healthy, we could still be dangerous. We could do some damage. There was a lot of stuff going on, but Dame was like, “If we’re healthy, we’re good.” And at the end of the day, we’ve really improved the roster.
