COOL, COLLECTED NURSE IS EASILY RAPS’ TOP ROOKIE
First-year head coach has earned his place after bouncing around basketball world
When Nick Nurse got the call some nine months ago telling him the Raptors job was his, it almost seems like a basketball lifetime ago.
DeMar DeRozan was still a Raptor. LeBron James was still a Cleveland Cavalier. Kawhi Leonard was a mystery on the move, heading somewhere. Marc Gasol was part of the furniture in Memphis. Pascal Siakam was just another guy in the NBA, albeit an athletic one. And the expectations of a first-year coach were not translated or defined in any tangible way.
Then just about everything changed. LeBron went to Los Angeles. DeRozan was traded to San Antonio for Leonard. The Boston Celtics were just about everybody’s choice to win the Eastern Conference of the NBA. And Nurse, a career basketball vagabond, who has kicked around from place to place and league to league, suddenly watched the parting of the Eastern Conference seas to where he finds himself today: more than three-quarters of the way through a rookie campaign in which he doesn’t feel the part of rookie at all.
And he doesn’t appear, in almost any way, to be in over his head in a league not exactly known for welcoming new coaching faces.
Nurse’s Toronto Raptors are really in a place this franchise has never been before. There is an opportunity that hasn’t existed for real in any season before this one. The Raptors are legitimate contenders. They have a shot to get to the NBA Finals, which never seemed, frankly, possible before. They have the second-best record in the league for the second straight season and may well finish the season with the second best record, ahead of Golden State two years in a row.
“Would we like to play better in some of the games this year?” said Nurse, answering a question with a question of his own. “Of course. Would we like to have won a few more? Of course. But I think there’s a lot to be positive about. If the playoffs we’re starting this weekend, we’d be ready to go.”
Nurse has waited his entire basketball life for this season. When you’re coaching the Derby Storm or the Birmingham Bullets or the Brighton Bears, there’s a part of you that comes out after the game, holding on to a cold beer, talking or dreaming with your assistants or your training staff about what will happen when you finally get that NBA shot. You think: I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do that and I’m going to be true to myself. And here is Nurse, with a .708 winning percentage, greater than any Maple Leafs season in history, greater than any Blue Jays season before it, better than any Argos season except for the two Doug Flutie years, writing his own kind of history on his maiden voyage throughout the NBA.
What has surprised him so far? “I don’t really feel the momentum, emotional swings up and down, very much. And I’m not sure that’s been true about my coaching life. It feels differently to me because there are so many games, they come so quickly, and I watch the league. I overreact to losing to Orlando at home, and then you realize so is everybody else.”
Those who know Nurse best, those aware of his coaching past, have been rather amazed by his calmness this season, at his consistency, his composure, at his emotional control, about not looking like so many first-year coaches over the years, with that deer-in-the-headlights, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here, expression.
His body language is about belonging and being in charge and it is rather amazing all that has been thrown at him in his first full season. The team he was hired to coach isn’t the team he is coaching. His lineup changes about as often as he changes his ties. He has to deal with the daily Kawhi Leonard pandering called load management: He makes as many decisions as he can, but some things are out of his pay grade, like when Leonard deems to play and when others order him to take the night off.
Mike Babcock loves his lineup to be uninterrupted. Most coaches do. Nurse hasn’t had the luxury or the comfort or the confidence to stick with any one lineup. Leonard plays and sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes Serge Ibaka starts at centre, now it’s a question each game if it’s him or Gasol. He thought back in June that OG Anunoby might start at small forward, but Pascal Siakam ended that thought process almost immediately. And in between it’s melding last year’s talent with this year’s talent, with the trade deadline talent, with the health issues, including point guards Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet, who have both missed a lot of games. For a team this special in the standings, there are so many little matters that need to be attended to over these next five weeks.
This is where the coaching becomes a delicate practice.
I don’t really feel the momentum, emotional swings upanddown, very much. I’m not sure that’s been true about my coaching life (before now).