Continuing our season outlook series now with the Portland Trailblazers.

Interesting franchise didn't do much other than moving on from Alan Crab.

This all season made the big move though for use of Nurghitch.

A reason perhaps for optimism with this team and joining us now is the host of Lockdown Blazers

and a good buddy of mine, Eric Gunterson. Eric, good to have you on.

Thanks for having me Nate. Very excited to to be back on Dunk Don.

Thank you for having me. Love listening and obviously great to talk to you since it's been a while.

Yeah, so where I want to start with, and I think it's more relevant for this team than

some others that were doing the Hawks later with Brad Rowland and they've completely changed their team.

What I really want to focus on is the period after Nurghitch came over before he suffered

that leg fracture late in the season. What did they look like during that time?

Why were they so effective? I think the rolling threat that Nurghitch provided both,

just as a guy that rolled to the rim and gave them a presence in the paint, was huge because

Mason Plumley was a really good picking role player. He was good at passing the ball out of the

picking role. It's basically what he was good at. And Nurghitch could do a lot more out of it and I

thought was really just better at rolling to the rim. I think Plumley was good at passing the ball,

but it didn't really, I felt often at times that some of his assists weren't really helping.

It was just because that was their only option in terms of playmakers and that was the best way

to use him. But he didn't really do enough, I think, to in variety to really make a big difference.

I think that's one of the biggest things that Nurghitch provided. And he also, I thought, was a very

unselfish player. Although he didn't rack up as many assists as Plumley did, I thought he was

a more unselfish player. He was a sister right, actually. I think I looked at it. I think it was

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