Raptors coach Nurse named NBA Coach of the Year
Nick Nurse didn’t know why he was being asked to appear on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” basketball program on Saturday afternoon.
He knew that the panellists Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal had a penchant for joking around, but he figured something was up when they played a video from Wayne Chandlee, Nurse’s high school basketball coach.
Wearing a Raptors sweater, Chandlee was the first to congratulate Nurse for being voted the NBA’s Coach of the Year. Raptors guards Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet then appeared to present Nurse with the Red Auerbach Trophy.
“I didn’t really figure it out until coach Chandlee appeared on the screen,” Nurse said in a videoconference from Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Saturday. “(The panellists) showed my high school team photo, and they joke around a lot and kid a lot, and I thought that’s where we were still going. But when coach Chandlee had a message for me i guess that kind of hit home that that’s what was going to happen.”
Nurse was a runaway winner, receiving 90 firstplace votes from a panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters. He finished with 470 points. Milwaukee coach Mike Budenholzer was second after leading the Bucks to the best record in the suspended season, earning 147 points. Oklahoma City’s Billy Donovan (134) was third.
The Coach of the Year Award continues a highly successful stint as an NBA head coach for Nurse, who led Toronto to its first league title last season. Toronto went 53-19 in the pandemicshortened 2019-20 regular season.