Life changes for Raps coach
In wake of NBA title, Nick Nurse finding constant attention ‘just wild’
SHANGHAI, China — Less than 24 hours after he popped that first bottle of bubbly in celebration of the Raptors’ NBA championship last June, Nick Nurse began to see just how much life had changed.
The day after that Game 6 win over the Golden State Warriors in Oakland sealed the deal and after a long night of celebration, the first-year NBA head coach awoke to a video invitation on his phone from Chicago Cubs’ organist Gary Pressy.
Nurse still has the invite on his phone and was only too happy to play it for a couple of journalists who have made their way to China to chronicle the Nurse-coached Team Canada journey through FIBA World Cup play.
“Nick, great job on the great run to the championship, bud,” Pressy begins on the video. “That was super. Now make sure I see you in the summer here at Wrigley Field. Make sure you bring the hardware and make sure you bring your singing voice because we’d love to have you do the stretch. And there’s a song here that fits the moment.”
Pressy then turns around to his organ and starts playing ‘Take me Out to the Ball Game.’
Growing up in Carroll, Iowa, a town of about 10,000, the Cubs dominated Nurse’s summers long before basketball became his focus, so you can understand just how monumental that moment was for him.
Over 11,000 kilometers and some seven weeks later, Nurse still can’t believe his boyhood dream of singing — complete with the Harry Carey glasses, no less — Take Me Out to the Ball Game at a Cubs game has been realized.
The Cubs were well aware of Nurse by the time the Raptors won. He made the journey to Chicago soon after he was named the Raptors head coach to pick Joe Maddon’s brain about leadership ideas.
Nurse’s turn to take the mike at Wrigley came about a month later and he did so in front of friends and family and his entire coaching Raptors’ staff that was in Chicago for a year-end retreat.
“I just kind of always wondered how I could get myself (to do) the seventh-inning stretch,” a to-this-day Cubs-crazy Nurse said. “I just never really had any ideas of how to get there and now I have one. Winning an NBA title is a pretty good way of doing it.”
Nurse admits he didn’t practice too much for the big moment but with 2 1/2 year old son Leo just learning to sing, dad may have got a little practice in singing those famous words just a few times each night before young Leo’s bedtime.
His life ever since that winning night in Oakland has been a daily reminder of how quickly change comes with the kind of transcendent success that accompanies an NBA championship.
Certainly in Toronto Nurse gets stopped constantly by well wishers and enthusiastic fans wanting to tell him how much they appreciate the job he and the Raptors did throughout that championship run.
But even while in Australia, where the Canadian team spent more than two weeks getting ready for this FIBA tournament, Nurse was stopped time and again by well wishers.
“That’s the biggest lifestyle difference,” Nurse said, seated in a meeting room at the Team Canada hotel in an upscale Shanghai neighbourhood. “Of course, all over Toronto it’s happening. Getting on flights, you know … but I’m not sure how I feel about it. I try to be as gracious as I can about it. I’m not sure. It’s just wild to me, I guess. It’s just different. It’s just so different. Five months ago my life was pretty normal.”