2026-27 projection
| GP | MPG | FG% | FT% | 3PM | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 58 | 23.0 | .505 | .620 | 0.5 | 9.5 | 9.0 | 3.8 | 1.0 | 0.5 | 2.1 |
- 9-cat: 90-145, materially better in punt-FT; points: top 100-145; dynasty: 180-260.
- Role: projected starting center in Utah's 240-minute map.
- 2025-26 baseline: 41 games, 26.4 minutes, 10.9 points, 10.4 rebounds, 4.8 assists, 1.3 steals, and 0.5 blocks on .503 FG and .549 FT. ESPN Utah stats, accessed 2026-07-18
Health and fantasy thesis
Nasal surgery ended Nurkic's season in February. Utah re-signed him July 9, and current reporting projects him atop the center depth chart after Walker Kessler left. NBA/AP injury report, 2026-02-24 · NBA signing report, 2026-07-09 · RotoWire Jazz news, accessed 2026-07-18
His passing and rebounding survive reduced minutes, but Hayes, Filipowski, Bamba, and Jackson create a hard ceiling. Ceiling: 26 minutes reproduce a 10/10/5 line and top-80 punt-FT value. Floor: 18-minute committee work or another absence makes him a waiver player.
Career record
Pre-NBA: No college — a European club product. Youth basketball at Zlatorog Laško (Slovenia), then briefly with Union Olimpija in February 2012 for the Nike International Junior Tournament in Belgrade (18.8 points, 11.0 rebounds in five games). Signed with Cedevita Zagreb (Croatia) for 2012-14. In 2012-13 he was buried under Aleksandar Petrović — 6 Euroleague games at 1.8 points — and was loaned to KK Zadar in January 2013 for minutes. His 2013-14 breakout came under Jasmin Repeša: 11.6 points and 5.6 rebounds in 16.3 minutes in the Adriatic League, which made him a FIBA Europe Young Player of the Year nominee. Draft: 2014, first round, 16th overall, Chicago Bulls; traded on draft night to Denver. Rookie-scale contract signed July 31, 2014.
| Season | Age | Team | GP | MPG | PTS | REB | AST | STL | BLK | 3PM | FG% | FT% | TO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | 20 | DEN | 62 | 17.8 | 6.9 | 6.2 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 1.1 | 0.0 | .446 | .636 | 1.4 |
| 2015-16 | 21 | DEN | 32 | 17.1 | 8.2 | 5.5 | 1.3 | 0.8 | 1.4 | 0.0 | .417 | .616 | 1.7 |
| 2016-17 | 22 | DEN/POR | 65 | 21.4 | 10.2 | 7.2 | 1.9 | 0.8 | 1.1 | 0.0 | .507 | .571 | 2.2 |
| 2017-18 | 23 | POR | 79 | 26.4 | 14.3 | 9.0 | 1.8 | 0.8 | 1.4 | 0.0 | .505 | .630 | 2.3 |
| 2018-19 | 24 | POR | 72 | 27.4 | 15.6 | 10.4 | 3.2 | 1.0 | 1.4 | 0.0 | .508 | .773 | 2.3 |
| 2019-20 | 25 | POR | 8 | 31.6 | 17.6 | 10.3 | 4.0 | 1.4 | 2.0 | 0.3 | .495 | .886 | 2.4 |
| 2020-21 | 26 | POR | 37 | 23.8 | 11.5 | 9.0 | 3.4 | 1.0 | 1.1 | 0.3 | .514 | .619 | 2.0 |
| 2021-22 | 27 | POR | 56 | 28.2 | 15.0 | 11.1 | 2.8 | 1.1 | 0.6 | 0.3 | .535 | .690 | 2.6 |
| 2022-23 | 28 | POR | 52 | 26.8 | 13.3 | 9.1 | 2.9 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 0.8 | .519 | .661 | 2.3 |
| 2023-24 | 29 | PHX | 76 | 27.3 | 10.9 | 11.0 | 4.0 | 1.1 | 1.1 | 0.3 | .510 | .640 | 2.3 |
| 2024-25 | 30 | PHX/CHA | 51 | 20.8 | 8.9 | 7.8 | 2.3 | 0.8 | 0.7 | 0.6 | .477 | .664 | 1.9 |
| 2025-26 | 31 | UTA | 41 | 26.4 | 10.9 | 10.4 | 4.8 | 1.3 | 0.5 | 0.6 | .503 | .549 | 2.5 |
| Career | 631 | 24.5 | 11.8 | 8.9 | 2.6 | 0.9 | 1.1 | 0.2 | .502 | .661 | 2.2 |
Two split seasons. 2016-17: 45 games in Denver at 17.9 minutes and 8.0 points before the February trade, then 20 games in Portland at 29.2 minutes, 15.2 points, 10.4 rebounds and 3.2 assists — the role change that made his career. 2024-25: 25 games in Phoenix (23.7 MPG, 8.6 points, 9.2 rebounds) before the February deadline trade, then 26 games in Charlotte at a reduced 18.1 minutes.
Fantasy history: Season-end 9-cat ranks are not verifiable for individual seasons at time of writing and are not asserted here. The category shape has been stable and readable for a decade: rebounds, assists for a center, and steals are the wins; free throw percentage is a persistent, severe negative (career .661, and below .650 in seven of twelve seasons); turnovers at 2.2 career are a second real cost. This is the classic punt-FT big, and his value gap between standard 9-cat and punt-FT builds is one of the widest in the center pool. His best category seasons were 2018-19 and 2021-22, when volume and health lined up. Points-league shape is somewhat better than the raw category shape because points formats reward the rebound-plus-assist double contribution without punishing the free throw line as harshly, though the turnovers still bite in leagues that count them.
Durability: GP by season: 62, 32, 65, 79, 72, 8, 37, 56, 52, 76, 51, 41. He has cleared 70 games three times in twelve years. Named causes: surgery to repair a partially torn left patellar tendon on May 20, 2015, with the recovery costing the front half of 2015-16 (returned January 2, 2016); a compound fracture of the left tibia and fibula on March 25, 2019 against Brooklyn in double overtime, which ended that season and nearly all of 2019-20 — the 8 games in 2019-20 were his bubble return; a fractured right wrist on January 14, 2021 (returned March 26); plantar fasciitis in the left foot that ended 2021-22 on March 28, 2022; a three-game suspension in December 2024 plus a benching in January 2025 that suppressed the Phoenix half of 2024-25 for non-medical reasons; and season-ending nose surgery announced February 23, 2026 that closed 2025-26 at 41 games. The pattern is not one recurring site but an unusually long list of discrete, serious events, several of them lower-body and load-bearing.
Trajectory: Nurkic's arc has two hinges, and both were role rather than skill. The first was the February 2017 Denver-to-Portland trade, which took him from 17.9 minutes to 29.2 and immediately produced a 15/10/3 line — evidence that the earlier production was minutes-suppressed, not talent-suppressed. The second is the post-2019 leg fracture era: he came back and has never again matched the 2018-19 scoring level, with points per game trending 15.6, 11.5, 15.0, 13.3, 10.9, 8.9, 10.9 while the rebounding and passing held. That divergence is the key diagnostic — the skills that survived are the ones that do not require burst (positional rebounding, high-post passing, which has actually improved to a career-best 4.8 assists at age 31), and the one that decayed is rim scoring and shot volume. Blocks have collapsed from a 1.1-1.4 baseline to 0.5-0.7 over the last three seasons, which is the clearest signal of athletic decline in the profile. He is now two years past the point on the aging curve where centers hold value, and the 2025-26 line — a genuinely useful 10.9/10.4/4.8 with 1.3 steals — was produced on a bad team in a role Utah handed him rather than one he won. For 2026-27 the honest read is that the per-minute production is still real and the availability is the entire bet: twelve seasons of injury history and a .549 free throw mark last year mean the projection above should be treated as conditional on 55-plus games, which he has hit only five times since 2017.
Career sources: ESPN career stats · Wikipedia — Jusuf Nurkić · NBA.com — Nurkic out for remainder of 2025-26 after nose surgery · NBA.com — Nurkic returns to Jazz on two-year contract
Open questions
- Has Nurkic fully recovered from nasal surgery?
- Does Hardy trust him to close, or prefer Jackson/Filipowski spacing and mobility?