This season has soured me on Nurse. He’s an excellent coach for a contender but not well suited to coach a developing team.
hoennking502
Insanity and Siakam is clearly playing fatigue last 10 games
This is how players blow their acl out
planterguy
Yes, he sure is. Of the many things that have been put on the table by this disappointing season, Nurse’s position has to be one of them.
It’s hard not to see this team as less than the sum of its parts, especially on defense. Usually when that happens, the coach ends up on the hot seat.
Nick Nursery is looking a little inflexible imo.
JoshSran04
This isnt his fault…. Fo needs to give us a better bench…
Literally right when we put our bench in during the pheonix game we lost the lead.
Comprehensive_Lab232
Timbs of the North ?
ThatDamnKyle
People will say “but the bench sucks!” – which is fine. But at the end of the day, when your bench is a mix of young guys and vets, you gotta make it work. Either you need to develop guys or you need to trust your vets.
It wasn’t that long ago that people thought Birch was going to be our starting C for the long-term, or that Boucher was a 6th man of the year candidate, or that Young was going to be a big acquisition that would help us in the playoffs and bring a veteran presence to the team/bench.
Our scheme is only good if you have players who can play it. If you don’t then you need to make adjustments. Nurse does not seem willing to adjust his formula enough to let anyone but the starters and a select few reserves play. Which, as we are seeing, is burning out our guys and even that scheme is having mixed results.
notraptorfaniswear
Nick Nurse has 0 clue about overtraining. You would think that a lot of professional teams would know more, but all the off-season rah-rah speeches show that basketball coaches are still sticking to old school bro science. They seem ignorant that overtraining can lead to worse performance.
jayinscarb
NN still trying to win games and that’ll only happen with the starters since he clearly doesn’t trust anyone else. The front office needs to go decide which direction they are going asap cause once they rightfully choose to be sellers then these young guys can play.
It’s kinda sad how this AMAZING sub had such awesome discussion regarding all the end of bench guys in the pre-season. What their potential was, how they can contribute and grow and become key parts of this team and they have been absolutely glued to the bench.
jeffcrafff
Yes Nurse loves playing his starters. I feel like maybe there needs to be more context here though. Nurse has had pretty slim pickings in terms of talent since our 2019 and 2020 seasons. This also doesn’t factor in injuries. I’d be interested to see Blake’s numbers in 2019 and 2020 vs. 2021 onwards.
On the other hand, it does seem like bench players have to meet a pretty stringent set of standards to stay in the rotation. Are we not getting good enough players, or is Nurse too hard to please?
Whatever the case, it’s easy to start thinking everything is the problem when a team is losing. It’s obvious we need to make a trade, I wish people would wait until after the front office has acted before throwing a coach like Nurse under the bus.
Odd-Koala1290
No guard depth, and no playable C in big games isn’t the coach’s fault.
Cheechers23
Yes Nick needs to tone it down but if it’s happening over 4 years, I feel like more of the blame needs to fall on the front office
AlexRescueDotCom
Nick Nurse to Shanghai, confirmed.
kpeds45
This Reddit fanbase deserves 15 years of Kings fandom. You guys want to rebuild, you all hate our top 5 coach.
Be careful what you wish for morons.
Busy-Tangerine6706
Where did he pull these numbers from? Can we see them?
Etobocoke
Who wants to come play for Nurse, if he is going to shorten your career by grinding you. And that’s if he likes you. Otherwise you’ll be riding the bench and having no in game development.
Life_Of_High
I remember at the beginning of the year reporter asked about Fred’s minutes and Nurse scoffed at the question. This is why people joke about Nurse being Thibs with better PR. He plays his top guys a lot and grinds them down into a nub during the regular season.
PlumCantaloupe
But did they talk about our bench quality the last 4 seasons also? Especially relative to other winning teams?
This is a crazy stat, but we have been trying to win every game the last 4 seasons, except Tampa where even Blake admitted he didn’t look as it in isolation.
Kevita24
No, he’s not. You have to put this clip into context…they also talked about how the front office screwed Nick Nurse by not providing him a bench…
How are we gonna blame the minutes on the coach when the roster has had the same issues since Tampa? That’s three consecutive seasons where a starting C and a backup point guard has not materialized…
It’s easy to blame the coach in this situation, but if he played his bench enough to ease the minutes, then there’s no All-NBA for Siakam, no ROTY for Barnes, no all-star selection for Vanvleet. Now you have your starters pissed off since they’re missing out on recognition and the playoffs because coach chose to throw the wins away.
The minutes are a problem, but roster construction is the bigger issue. I implore you guys to watch the bench play before you point the finger at the coach to “make it work”. These guys kill us *every game*. We are in the lottery and 4/5 starters have a plus minus of at least +30 on the season. This team is extremely top heavy.
XenaRen
What are those numbers for 2019 and 2020 when we actually had decent production off the bench? I honestly can’t think of another team that’s trying to win with a worst bench than us in the past two seasons.
Look at the Celtics…. their bench is 10x better than ours and Tatum is still playing 37.5MPG which is just slightly below Pascal.
dfsaqwe
Nick Nurse is just trying win, plain, simple.
Alternative:
Nick Nurse needs to realize this team can’t win, and coaching and management need to accept the tank.
Charming-Victory3337
this is exactly why nick nurse is a horrible developmental coach. winning over development even when it doesn’t matter. maybe his style of coaching doesn’t fit the current position of the team. he either needs to change up his approach or kill any value our bench pieces could possibly gain.
Toon-Day
Get Nick Nurse to hang out with Coach Bud for the summer and he can explain how he never over plays Giannis and still wins
LifeofWalk
Use it or lose it – It means that if you don’t continue to practice or use an ability, you might lose that ability.
Like a bench!
Mrakos
Why wasn’t Nurse aware of OG’s status for the rest of the road trip? Is their something bubbling under the surface of the Raptors. Seems fishy to me.
Jayson2K
I’ll leave it at this: if shit goes way too south, the coach is always the first to go. There were high expectations for this season with no external circumstances in the way (82 road games, COVID, etc) and none of that has come to fruition
Sure we as the customers watching the product know roster construction was the big issue, and FO knows it but are they gonna publicly acknowledge and own up to it? We’ve seen it time and time where the fall guy is always the coach
Novel_Goal3140
Most overrated coach in the NBA. If it wasn’t for Kawhi carrying him to the chip he probably wouldn’t have a job right now.
dsbllr
Stop blaming Nurse when Masai isn’t giving him the right roster. It’s bs
Equivalent_Fox_1546
I think running your players into the ground over the course of a few seasons can absolutely have an effect on where the team is in the standings eventually.
It-sOkBro
if the bench sucks…so what? you play them, we lose games, we get a lottery pick and the bench is better next year lmao this is basketball 101
FactorNo7477
Nurse gotta trust his bench more. Like don’t run an 8 man rotation. Try a 9 man rotation, or a 10 man rotation (that is if our FO improves the bench)
Maya-Inca-Boy
Lmaooo the way y’all treat our players who have to endure those minutes and are still asked by everyone to consistently perform Vs the coach who makes them play that many minutes because he can’t develop players is hilarious. Nurse will always get defended I guess.
Ecstatic-Buy-2907
2019 MPG stats in regular season, for reference
Kawhi – 34 Lowry – 34 Siakam – 32 Danny – 28 Marc – 25 (basically split his minutes with Serge during regular season)
Definitely helps to have Vanvleet, Serge, OG and Norm on your bench
And obviously those numbers jumped in the playoffs (as they should)
beefJeRKy-LB
If you hear the full clip it’s about how you can’t ask your coach to win and not give him any useful bench pieces as an FO.
Fraijshe
Jerry stackhouse we miss you!!
definitelynotagay
It’s unreal how many signs are pointing to us needing to tank. Like just let the bench play and let’s lose the games. Playing the starters this many minutes only for us to get a losing record anyways is just unnecessary.
IonHazzikostasIsGod
No one was crying about Nick when we actually had a bench in 2019-20.
Now we don’t have a bench.
Now people are crying about Nick.
Gee I fucking wonder what the difference is
Blame the FO
dotspread
Nick taking a page outta decade old Coach Tom Thibodeau playbook
MrkGrn
The main issue is he’s playing guys like this with zero results. Sure the bench sucks, we aren’t winning with the rotation he’s playing now anyways.
attainwealthswiftly
Nick Thibs is a menace
dokterr
Mins played has been pretty much my number one issue for the past few years. Feels like every game, I’ll look at the stat sheet and I’ll see three, maybe four guys that are nearing 40. It’d be a goddamn miracle when the most you’d see is like 35. That was never sustainable, no matter your age.
42 Comments
This season has soured me on Nurse. He’s an excellent coach for a contender but not well suited to coach a developing team.
Insanity and Siakam is clearly playing fatigue last 10 games
This is how players blow their acl out
Yes, he sure is. Of the many things that have been put on the table by this disappointing season, Nurse’s position has to be one of them.
It’s hard not to see this team as less than the sum of its parts, especially on defense. Usually when that happens, the coach ends up on the hot seat.
Nick Nursery is looking a little inflexible imo.
This isnt his fault…. Fo needs to give us a better bench…
Literally right when we put our bench in during the pheonix game we lost the lead.
Timbs of the North ?
People will say “but the bench sucks!” – which is fine. But at the end of the day, when your bench is a mix of young guys and vets, you gotta make it work. Either you need to develop guys or you need to trust your vets.
It wasn’t that long ago that people thought Birch was going to be our starting C for the long-term, or that Boucher was a 6th man of the year candidate, or that Young was going to be a big acquisition that would help us in the playoffs and bring a veteran presence to the team/bench.
Our scheme is only good if you have players who can play it. If you don’t then you need to make adjustments. Nurse does not seem willing to adjust his formula enough to let anyone but the starters and a select few reserves play. Which, as we are seeing, is burning out our guys and even that scheme is having mixed results.
Nick Nurse has 0 clue about overtraining. You would think that a lot of professional teams would know more, but all the off-season rah-rah speeches show that basketball coaches are still sticking to old school bro science. They seem ignorant that overtraining can lead to worse performance.
NN still trying to win games and that’ll only happen with the starters since he clearly doesn’t trust anyone else. The front office needs to go decide which direction they are going asap cause once they rightfully choose to be sellers then these young guys can play.
It’s kinda sad how this AMAZING sub had such awesome discussion regarding all the end of bench guys in the pre-season. What their potential was, how they can contribute and grow and become key parts of this team and they have been absolutely glued to the bench.
Yes Nurse loves playing his starters. I feel like maybe there needs to be more context here though. Nurse has had pretty slim pickings in terms of talent since our 2019 and 2020 seasons. This also doesn’t factor in injuries. I’d be interested to see Blake’s numbers in 2019 and 2020 vs. 2021 onwards.
On the other hand, it does seem like bench players have to meet a pretty stringent set of standards to stay in the rotation. Are we not getting good enough players, or is Nurse too hard to please?
Whatever the case, it’s easy to start thinking everything is the problem when a team is losing. It’s obvious we need to make a trade, I wish people would wait until after the front office has acted before throwing a coach like Nurse under the bus.
No guard depth, and no playable C in big games isn’t the coach’s fault.
Yes Nick needs to tone it down but if it’s happening over 4 years, I feel like more of the blame needs to fall on the front office
Nick Nurse to Shanghai, confirmed.
This Reddit fanbase deserves 15 years of Kings fandom. You guys want to rebuild, you all hate our top 5 coach.
Be careful what you wish for morons.
Where did he pull these numbers from? Can we see them?
Who wants to come play for Nurse, if he is going to shorten your career by grinding you. And that’s if he likes you. Otherwise you’ll be riding the bench and having no in game development.
I remember at the beginning of the year reporter asked about Fred’s minutes and Nurse scoffed at the question. This is why people joke about Nurse being Thibs with better PR. He plays his top guys a lot and grinds them down into a nub during the regular season.
But did they talk about our bench quality the last 4 seasons also? Especially relative to other winning teams?
This is a crazy stat, but we have been trying to win every game the last 4 seasons, except Tampa where even Blake admitted he didn’t look as it in isolation.
No, he’s not. You have to put this clip into context…they also talked about how the front office screwed Nick Nurse by not providing him a bench…
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEZ0Vk11dSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEZ0Vk11dSs)
How are we gonna blame the minutes on the coach when the roster has had the same issues since Tampa? That’s three consecutive seasons where a starting C and a backup point guard has not materialized…
It’s easy to blame the coach in this situation, but if he played his bench enough to ease the minutes, then there’s no All-NBA for Siakam, no ROTY for Barnes, no all-star selection for Vanvleet. Now you have your starters pissed off since they’re missing out on recognition and the playoffs because coach chose to throw the wins away.
The minutes are a problem, but roster construction is the bigger issue. I implore you guys to watch the bench play before you point the finger at the coach to “make it work”. These guys kill us *every game*. We are in the lottery and 4/5 starters have a plus minus of at least +30 on the season. This team is extremely top heavy.
What are those numbers for 2019 and 2020 when we actually had decent production off the bench? I honestly can’t think of another team that’s trying to win with a worst bench than us in the past two seasons.
Look at the Celtics…. their bench is 10x better than ours and Tatum is still playing 37.5MPG which is just slightly below Pascal.
Nick Nurse is just trying win, plain, simple.
Alternative:
Nick Nurse needs to realize this team can’t win, and coaching and management need to accept the tank.
this is exactly why nick nurse is a horrible developmental coach. winning over development even when it doesn’t matter. maybe his style of coaching doesn’t fit the current position of the team. he either needs to change up his approach or kill any value our bench pieces could possibly gain.
Get Nick Nurse to hang out with Coach Bud for the summer and he can explain how he never over plays Giannis and still wins
Use it or lose it – It means that if you don’t continue to practice or use an ability, you might lose that ability.
Like a bench!
Why wasn’t Nurse aware of OG’s status for the rest of the road trip? Is their something bubbling under the surface of the Raptors. Seems fishy to me.
I’ll leave it at this: if shit goes way too south, the coach is always the first to go. There were high expectations for this season with no external circumstances in the way (82 road games, COVID, etc) and none of that has come to fruition
Sure we as the customers watching the product know roster construction was the big issue, and FO knows it but are they gonna publicly acknowledge and own up to it? We’ve seen it time and time where the fall guy is always the coach
Most overrated coach in the NBA. If it wasn’t for Kawhi carrying him to the chip he probably wouldn’t have a job right now.
Stop blaming Nurse when Masai isn’t giving him the right roster. It’s bs
I think running your players into the ground over the course of a few seasons can absolutely have an effect on where the team is in the standings eventually.
if the bench sucks…so what? you play them, we lose games, we get a lottery pick and the bench is better next year lmao this is basketball 101
Nurse gotta trust his bench more. Like don’t run an 8 man rotation. Try a 9 man rotation, or a 10 man rotation (that is if our FO improves the bench)
Lmaooo the way y’all treat our players who have to endure those minutes and are still asked by everyone to consistently perform Vs the coach who makes them play that many minutes because he can’t develop players is hilarious. Nurse will always get defended I guess.
2019 MPG stats in regular season, for reference
Kawhi – 34
Lowry – 34
Siakam – 32
Danny – 28
Marc – 25 (basically split his minutes with Serge during regular season)
Definitely helps to have Vanvleet, Serge, OG and Norm on your bench
And obviously those numbers jumped in the playoffs (as they should)
If you hear the full clip it’s about how you can’t ask your coach to win and not give him any useful bench pieces as an FO.
Jerry stackhouse we miss you!!
It’s unreal how many signs are pointing to us needing to tank. Like just let the bench play and let’s lose the games. Playing the starters this many minutes only for us to get a losing record anyways is just unnecessary.
No one was crying about Nick when we actually had a bench in 2019-20.
Now we don’t have a bench.
Now people are crying about Nick.
Gee I fucking wonder what the difference is
Blame the FO
Nick taking a page outta decade old Coach Tom Thibodeau playbook
The main issue is he’s playing guys like this with zero results. Sure the bench sucks, we aren’t winning with the rotation he’s playing now anyways.
Nick Thibs is a menace
Mins played has been pretty much my number one issue for the past few years. Feels like every game, I’ll look at the stat sheet and I’ll see three, maybe four guys that are nearing 40. It’d be a goddamn miracle when the most you’d see is like 35.
That was never sustainable, no matter your age.
It’s really concerning….