Last season saw a re-invigorated rivalry between the Denver Nuggets and the Portland Trail Blazers.
After all the drama which surfaced after the Jusuf Nurkic trade, to say the Blazers and Nuggets dislike each other would be the understatement of the year. After the heated race for the final playoff spot, many fans of the two teams were engaged in multiple arguments along with some heated trash talk.
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To top it all off, Jusuf Nurkic made a dig at the Nuggets on twitter during the NBA Awards when Charles Barkley laughed at Denver fans who thought the team would make the post season. Let us just say this, this did nothing but add fuel to the fire of the Northwest Division rivalry.
Now, a lot of this may be generated from the fans, but do not think what transpired last season is not in the back of the players’ minds coming into this new season.
Denver is much improved with the addition of Paul Millsap, however Portland still contains their own star duo in Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum. (Do not even dare bring up Jusuf Nurkic, he is vastly overrated and cannot stay healthy if his life depended on it, he is not even in the same air as Lillard and McCollum.) A couple years ago, no one would have even given this division rivalry a second thought, but times have most certainly changed.
With the state of these two franchises and what happened in the heated playoff race last season, do not be surprised to see some dog fights between these two teams this coming year. There is one fact both fan bases can rejoice in and that is the rivalry between the Blazers and Nuggets has finally been restored.
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It will be interesting to see what happens this year.