Jusuf Nurkic crossed a line this week, and the NBA world is letting him know it.
Speaking on the X&O’s Chat podcast with Edin Avdic, the Utah Jazz center went on the record calling former Phoenix Suns head coach Mike Budenholzer an “alcohol addict.” Nurkic said Budenholzer would set up one-on-one meetings just to provoke players. He claimed the coach’s drinking issues directly hurt the Suns roster.
“The guy was an alcohol addict. He was really having a problem with it,” Nurkic said.
That is a real accusation. It is not coded, it is not vague, and it is going to follow Nurkic around for a long time.
The basketball context here matters. Budenholzer took over the Suns in 2024 with a roster featuring Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, and Bradley Beal. Phoenix went 36-46 and missed the playoffs entirely. The Suns fired Budenholzer after one season, and Nurkic was traded out shortly after. By any honest measure, the Big 3 era in Phoenix was a disaster.
So Nurkic has reasons to be bitter. The basketball failed. His role failed. His relationship with the coaching staff clearly failed. Players talk to podcasts about all of that constantly, and most of the time the conversation stays within professional boundaries.
Nurkic blew through those boundaries.
The most damaging part of his comments came when he claimed Budenholzer was “literally explaining to KD how to make a basket.” It is the kind of line designed to humiliate, and it lands.
The backlash arrived fast. NBA media and fans pointed out that Budenholzer lost his brother in a car accident in 2023 while still coaching the Milwaukee Bucks. Whatever issues the coach was working through, public ridicule of a man during a deeply painful chapter of his life is not the move. Nurkic is being criticized for going at the personal life of a man who had just experienced a family tragedy, not the basketball decisions.
That is the real problem.
Players can and should be allowed to criticize their coaches publicly. The NBA is a transparent league, and the days of pretending behind closed doors are over. If Budenholzer was a bad in-game tactician, say so. If he treated players poorly, name it. If he failed to manage Durant, Booker, and Beal effectively, that is a legitimate basketball conversation.
Calling him an “alcohol addict” on a public podcast is something else entirely. Even if true, it is the kind of accusation that requires more than a one-off podcast appearance to back up. It opens Nurkic to legal exposure. It hurts Budenholzer’s ability to land another coaching job. And it crosses every locker-room code about what you do and do not say after a player-coach relationship ends.
Nurkic is also not exactly riding a wave of credibility right now. He has bounced from Phoenix to Charlotte to Utah in a 14-month window, and his on-court production has been declining. This kind of headline does not help his standing around the league.
The Suns will not respond publicly. Budenholzer is currently unemployed and unlikely to fight this in the press. The Bucks have not commented. The story will get a 48-hour news cycle, then move on.
But Nurkic just damaged his reputation, his future contract negotiations, and any chance he had of being seen as a clean-character veteran around the league. That is a high price for a single podcast appearance.
If he had something real to say about Budenholzer, this was the wrong way to say it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
