HOUSTON — Utah Jazz center Jusuf Nurkić will miss the rest of the season after undergoing nasal surgery on Tuesday.
Team sources confirmed the news after it was first reported on Monday night by Chris Haynes.
“He’s had a really bad deviated septum, he’s gotten hit in the face four or five times this year,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “His recent sickness has pushed that forward. It’s something that he’s needed to get done for a while now, so he’s going to get that taken care of.”
“I can’t really stress enough how patient he was with me. Through my whole career, I didn’t have a coach like that. I’ve been in some rough spots through my career, but never had that support like he does for me.”
Jusuf Nurkić on Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy
Over the course of the season with the Jazz, Nurkić has played a number of roles and has done so with a lot of success.
He came in expecting to be a bit of a veteran mentor and play backup to Walker Kessler. Shortly after the season began, Kessler had season-ending shoulder surgery and that pushed Nurkić into a much larger role as a mentor and as a starter.
As the season progressed he helped stabalize the Jazz’s young roster and especially give the young guards a seasoned presence to play off of. Additionally, his work as a facilitating five has given Hardy a lot to think about in terms of what is possible with the rest of the roster in the future.
“His passing has been elite this year,” Hardy said. “His ability to fight for space, offensively, and get his catch, allows us to put the ball in a variety of places. He’s allowed us to continue to tinker with some of our off-ball actions ... and we’ve done a couple of things this year that we haven’t done in the past, and he’s allowed us to believe in it because of some of the passes that he’s made and reads he’s made.”
The success of Nurkić’s season, that included a stretch of games in which he had three consecutive triple-doubles, had many wondering if the Jazz would look to flip him at the trade deadline. But when that didn’t happen, the narrative turned to what would happen at the end of the year.
With news that Nurkić’s season is finished, it’s time to wonder what will become of the Bosnian big man.
The choices are pretty simple. He can either cash in on a successful season by signing a deal elsewhere, or he can re-sign with the Jazz — assuming the Jazz would want to re-sign him.
There are many in the Jazz organization that would like to see Nurkić return next season, albeit on a smaller, more manageable salary, and with the understanding that he would again be slated to be Kessler’s backup (if the Jazz retain Kessler, who is entering restricted free agency).
Nurkić has many times expressed how much he’s enjoyed the season with the Jazz. He has been quick to extol the Jazz as an organization and has been impressed with how they welcomed him and how they’ve treated him. The same goes for his feelings about Hardy.
Numerous times he’s explained feeling disillusioned over the last couple of years, but then felt like he was able to level with and really talk about things with Hardy in a way that he hadn’t experienced with a coach previously.
“I can’t really stress enough how patient he was with me,” Nurkić said of Hardy back in December. “Through my whole career, I didn’t have a coach like that. I’ve been in some rough spots through my career, but never had that support like he does for me.”
If the Jazz are willing, it’s just going to come down to what Nurkić wants. There could be a bigger pay day waiting for him with another team, but there could be some stability and a build toward something exciting if he were to stay with the Jazz.
