Nick Nurse brought coached the Raptors to their first ever NBA Championship in the 2018-2019 Season as the first-year head coach. His understanding of the X and Os of the game, willingness to switch schemes on the fly, and overall disruptive force brough the Raptors to multiple seasons of success. During his first two seasons as head coach, he had winning percentages of 70 and 73% respectively, with the second season winning a well-deserved COTY award.
Despite his success as a head coach in the first two seasons, the next 3 would be rather different. The Tampa Tank season of 20-21 saw the Raptors as one of the worst teams in the league, partially due to injuries and losing one of the best home court advantages in the league. Since then, the slide has continued, though the team maintained a .500+ record, the slide was real.
With the end of the 2022 – 2023 tenure, Nick Nurse was fired as one of the most winning coaches in franchise history. Despite his many successes, the following will demonstrate some of Nick Nurses’ shortcomings as a head coach, and why it was indeed the right time to move on.
Just as importantly as the head coach, their staff play vital roles in player development, supporting substitution patterns, and providing the head coach with vital information to succeed.
All great coaching staff face attrition. Assistant coaches want bigger roles, head coaching gigs, or simply more pay in a different city. As a people manager, it is vital, as your staff faces attrition, to be able to replace the staff with replacements. Nurse replaced vital assistant coaches with names such as Nate Bjorkgren, Earl Watson, Trevor Gleeson, Nathanial Mitchel added over the course o. All of whom may have extensive coaching experience both at the NBA level and abroad, recent reports highlight that the coaching staff failed to mesh, and the general disunity was as significant factor or the Raptors short comings. Though some blame can be placed on the Raptors front office for failing to assist Nick Nurse in retaining key coaching staf0. Nick Nurses failure to keep unity and retain talent at the Championship level.
Coaching staff play a key role in the development of players such as much. During the Dwayne Casey era, the Raptors were known as one of the best player development organizations. Not only did starters get better year over year, but we also saw the bench mob be one of the most prolific benches in the league with +/-‘s better than the starters over the course of multiple seasons.
Nick Nurse and his staff, in this regard failed to develop players. Case and Point, Scottie Barns after coming of a well-deserved ROY Campain had as significant worse second season across the board. Not only does this appear in the stat sheet, but its evidence also when viewing this game. Scottie has made no visible progress on key facets of the game such as shooting and ball handling.
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Even worse when viewing some of the additions made to the Roster. I’m not going to pretend every addition has been fantastic and we should expect some sort of growth. Key additions the franchise should have been excited for such as Precious Achiuwa saw real no real progress in their development. Even Gary Trent Junior seems to be the very same player who arrived from Portland Whether it be due to a lack of consistent play time, poor game plan choices, injuries or off court choices. We saw no real changes even when it’s clear that the font office believes that there is something to unlock.
This extends further back, since taking the reigns as Head Coach, there is no single identifiable example of a player we can point to having break-out seasons. Though Pascal Siakam, OG, and FVV have taken the reigns from their predecessors, the year over year development many Raptors fans have come to expect has not come to fruition under Nick Nurse.
Finally, this brings me to my final aspect. Despite the many highlights of the offence such the playmaking of Scottie & All NBA caliber seasons of Pascal, the fantastic full court offence, offensive rebounding etc. The record speaks for itself, from the eye test the Raptors have not been enjoyable to watch.
Since moving back from Tampa, the team saw the starting lineups of FVV/GTJ/OG/Scottie/Pascal through FVV/Scottie/OG/Pascal/Poeltl. Regardless of the lineup a few things became clear, there wasn’t enough shooting of the court, a clear lack of ball movement on the offensive end, and a lack of a center. Though the final point was addressed with Poeltl, the scrambling defense employed over the past 3 seasons was ineffective.
Regardless, with the starting lineup the issues were apparently, a lack of players who could create separation at the perimeter, a lack of shooting, and a paint full of defenders on drives. Worse so, it was common for long stretches of the game to see minimal off-ball movement and a lack of ball movement. For a coach known to improvise and adapt, we rarely saw the creativity come to light in the past season and often deferring to players to let them find way. Issues are only worsened by long shifts where players frequently saw MPGs in the high 30s and low 40s which made matters worse as the season went on. When found behind, they were often asked to complete and claw their way back against teams when other coaches would bring out benches, often leading to false comebacks.
To keep the hopes and dreams alive, a team that doesn’t run an explicit bench unit saw the Hot & Cold shooter in GTJ sent to the bench. A limiting and more sporadic bench minutes of Boucher, Achiuwa, Yuta Watanabe. Others gladly excused themselves from the rotation with their less than stellar play despite long leases – Patrick McCaw, Justin Champagnie, and Malachi Flynn. Others were eliminated from the rotation such as Thad Young, Issac Bonga, Svi Mykhailiuk, and Alex Len. As Nick Nurses tenure progressed it became increasingly rare for full bench line-ups to be run as trust in bench pieces errored.
Though some of the blame is surely to go to the front office, with additions failing to meet roster expectations – Freddie Gillespie, Rodney Hood, Matt Thomas, D.J. Wilson, Juancho Hernangómez, Issac Bonga, Svi Mykhailiuk and the ever-unavailable Otto Porter Jr. None were high risk moves or a waste of draft capital. Their times with the Raptors were short, low cost, and should not hinder the progress of other players.
Nick Nurse is a championship caliber coach. With a well-developed roaster I am sure he could win a championship again. However, as the Raptors look towards developing a contending roster its clear that Nick Nurse failed at developing young players, manager roaster rotations, or keep his coaching staff in line. Combined these factors are directly responsible for the front office losing faith in Nick Nurse’s abilities and terminating his contract.
Whoever steps into his shoes has large shoes to fill, not only in job expectations but to one of the most critical fanbases in the League.
by kid50cal
2 Comments
One of Nurse’s biggest shortcoming is player flexibility. Meaning, the best coaches can adapt to their personnel and build offenses and defences around each new player and adapt them to the veterans on the team. He didn’t seem to be able build for the new players the last few seasons and as a result forced players into roles that they failed in.
Someone give the Coles Notes version