Creative Nurse gets some satisfaction
From the moment Dwane Casey was fired after seven years as Raptors coach, Nick Nurse was one of the favourites to be named Casey’s successor. On Thursday, when Nurse was finally introduced as such, 35 days had passed. “A long month,” Nurse said. To help bide the time during Raptors president Masai Ujiri’s dance-a-thon with due diligence, Toronto’s head coach in waiting (and waiting) took a trip to England with his son Noah, an excursion that included a Rolling Stones concert at aptly named Old Trafford. While Ujiri hemmed and hawed — ultimately narrowing the field to a two- man race between Nurse and San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Ettore Messina that came “down to the wire,” to use Ujiri’s phrase — Nurse communed with geriatric rock.
“It takes a second to get used to (how the Rolling Stones) look a little different, seriously,” the 50-year-old Nurse said of the famed band led by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, both aged 74. “And then a few songs in you don’t even notice (how old they are) any more and Mick is going bonkers.”
If we learned anything about how Nurse plans to work the stage he’ll be afforded as the ninth coach in Raptors history, maybe it’s that his philosophy hardly lines up with his status as a fan of a musical group that did its best work a half-century ago. Seemingly uninterested in humming along to the same old metaphorical song, Nurse said it’ll be his priority to be an NBA innovator rather than an imitator.
“We’ve gotta be trying to think of what’s coming next before it comes next,” Nurse said. “I think the game in general is changing so fast right before our eyes. I think it’s changed so much in the last five years, it’s changed so much in the last three years …”
Given Ujiri’s reputation for a conservative aversion to the new, maybe Nurse wasn’t the obvious candidate. But if the team president always harboured frustration with Casey’s perceived weakness in making in-game adjustments, Ujiri took pains to more than once bill Nurse as an able “tactician” who “really thinks the game.”
“Trying new stuff and being innovative is just who Nick is,” Ujiri said. “He thinks the game differently. In the NBA, we’re a copycat league. That’s what we are. We copy everything that everybody else is doing. I’d love not to be that and go different ways … Sometimes they might fail, but what’s the next best thing. He’s that kind of thinker, to be honest.”
Not that this was a day for specifics, but Nurse did offer a few early thoughts about next season’s potential points of emphasis. Expect to see Kyle Lowry, whom Nurse said he admires as a peerless competitor, with the ball in his hands on the regular (this after a season in which Lowry was frequently used off the ball to limit his workload and emphasize his three-point shooting).
“I’m going to put the ball in his stomach a little bit more and have him run the offence,” Nurse said of the 32-year-old point guard.
Expect to see playoff benchwarmer Norm Powell given an opportunity to be a useful player — music to the ears of Ujiri, no doubt, given that Powell’s four-year deal worth $42 million (all figures U.S.) kicks in next season.
“One hundred per cent,” Nurse said, speaking of the chances Powell’s relevance can be reclaimed. “Certainly I’d like him to get a little dirtier, as far as getting on the floor and taking charges, just being a little bit more of a factor defensively because he’s strong and athletic and you’ve got to use that strength and athleticism at the defensive end.”
Expect to see a new-fangled defence Nurse believes will be more adaptable come playoff time. “Zone ideas, but with man-to-man principles,” Nurse said, adding that such a scheme might better suit the limits of, say, Jonas Valanciunas.
And expect Ujiri to at least strongly consider ways to renovate a roster clearly in need of a talent injection.
“Do we think it’s a perfect roster? No. We have work to do and we believe that,” Ujiri said. “But as we all know, things just don’t happen overnight in the NBA. It’s not the easiest thing to do. It takes a partner to do these things if you want to make trades. We are open, we’re going to be open going into the draft (next Thursday, in which the Raptors are without a pick). We’ll see.” How much improvement can a team expect to see by replacing the most successful coach in franchise history with a rookie hauling around a bunch of shiny ideas he thinks might work? Hard to say. But Nurse spoke as though he was going to turn the regular season into a test lab to implement strategies he hopes will come in handy when it matters.
To that end Nurse was asked how he would have approached the Cleveland series differently than his old boss, since it was the sweep to the Cavaliers that ultimately cost Casey the job. Ujiri, sitting next to Nurse, turned to listen to the answer with what seemed like considerable interest. What followed were approximately 254 words of limited substance. Which isn’t necessarily something fans should be concerned about. It’s not winning the press conference that’s important. It’s winning more playoff games than his predecessor.
“I learned a lot from (Casey). You can’t take away the five years of what you shared together,” Nurse said. “(But) the success that we wanna have is in the playoffs.”
No doubt. Still, Casey won 18 playoff games in the past three seasons combined. Whether Nurse’s team plays a new way or an old way — to butcher a familiar Stones title, that’s no small beast of a burden.