Tim BontempsESPN4 minutes to read
Nick Nurse will think about the future after the season
Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse said it will take a few weeks after the season to figure out his future.
PHILADELPHIA — After 10 years in Toronto as an assistant and head coach, Nick Nurse said Friday that it’s “going to take a few weeks to figure out where I’m at” at the conclusion of what he called “a tough season from a number of points of view.”
“Early on, I had very serious injuries with some key guys,” said the nurse before him. The Raptors lost 117-110 to the Philadelphia 76ers at the Wells Fargo Center. “I thought we were over it for a while… Then yeah, I think Trade Deadline, I don’t know if there were a thousand rumors, 999 of which were about us, it seemed like that. It was probably about as interesting as it gets.”
When asked where his head is, the nurse said he mainly focuses on two things.
“First of all, I think when this season is over, we’ll take stock of everything, and even personally, I’ll take a few weeks to figure out where I’m at, you know?” said nurse. “Like I said, where’s my head. And just look what the relationship is like with the organization and everything. It’s been 10 years for me now, and it’s a pretty good run. I don’t know, in those 10 years we’ve got to be ahead in number of wins with anybody in The League: I don’t even know where that is, but we’ve had a lot of great seasons.
“And then, right now, my head is to make this season as long as it can be. This team needs a playoff experience. So that’s where I’m at right now… Finish those six, see where we land, see if we can’t.” Sneak up a place or two in the standings, and then give them hell in the playoffs, and see if we can get in a real series and take it from there.”
When asked if that meant Nurse had considered his future somewhere other than Toronto after this season, he said he hadn’t.
he said no”. “I’m focused on this job, for sure, and this game, mainly. But I think 10 years is a good time to sit down and think a little bit. So I think we’ll do it all when the season is over.”
Nurse, 55, has been the head coach for the Raptors since the start of the 2018-2019 season and was an assistant under Dwane Casey with the franchise for five years prior to that.
Since taking over, Nurse has gone 224-160 as head coach of the Raptors, leading them to the 2019 NBA Championship in his first season. The team has made the playoffs in three out of four seasons.
The Raptors are seventh in the NBA in terms of wins over that period and second behind the Golden State Warriors since the start of the 2013-2014 season.
This season, Toronto hovered around . 500 for the first two months of the season before moving from December 10 to December 18 through February 1.
Since then, however, the Raptors have gone 15-9 — including posting the third-best defensive rating in the league during that span — and are tied with the Atlanta Hawks for eighth in the Eastern Conference standings. This stretch also coincided with Toronto’s acquisition of center Jacob Boltel – whom the team sent to the San Antonio Spurs in a Kawhi Leonard deal in the summer of 2018 – returning from San Antonio at the deadline to give them some needed size in the paint. .
“My background and my coaching is a lot of people come and go, the minor leagues and Europe and so forth, and you basically have to go in and put in a good, solid day of work no matter what happens, and put together a great game plan,” the nurse said when asked why things turned out. So and stick to that and show the positives, stay positive, show teach, keep showing teach what we can do better, get healthier, get more connected, play a little bit harder, start making more shots, all of those things add up, because there’s a lot Some really close losses there, too.
“So we’re not a million miles apart. So shape some things, polish some things, and go from there.”
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