The NBA All-Star Game is a showcase to celebrate the game’s best, to shine a spotlight on unique talents and provide a stage where they can shake, shimmy, fly and strut.
But those in the know recognize it takes a team for individuals to have a chance to shine.
So you won’t hear Toronto Raptors star Kyle Lowry talk about his individual accomplishments as he lines up in Chicago for his sixth All-Star appearance. He’s only there because others helped make it happen. Coaches, for example.
In an 82-game season, there are big goals and mini goals. One of the Raptors’ goals as their 15-game winning streak began to take shape was to be in second place in the Eastern Conference by Feb. 2, and thus guarantee head coach Nick Nurse and his staff the honour of coaching Team Giannis (since Mike Budenholzer of the first-place Bucks coached the All-Star Game in 2019, he was ineligible).
Mission accomplished.
“We go through all of it together. All the hard work, they put in hard work. I think it’s just important that we do that for them, too,” said Lowry before heading off to Chicago where he and Pascal Siakam will play for Team Giannis. “Not that we didn’t want to win [and] be in second place or whatever. But knowing that is an extra motivation, and something that we felt like we’ve got to go out there and do it and make sure they get an opportunity to be out there too.”
But within every team there are alliances and partnerships; micro-units that weave together to make the whole stronger. And while the entire Raptors staff gets to coach in Chicago, the honour carries a little more weight for Nurse and his right-hand man Nate Bjorkgren, a couple of Iowa-born hoops junkies who have known each other since Bjorkgren was a walk-on point guard with a full head of blonde hair and Nurse was a young assistant coach at the University of South Dakota in 1993-94.
It’s only taken 25 years, but the two Iowa boys have arrived at the centre of the basketball universe.
“I mean, I did a couple [of All-Star weekends] as a D-League coach,” said Nurse referring to years when the G League All-Star Game was an undercard to the main event. “And we got to kind of, you know, cross paths with the NBA guys when we were coming off the practice floor and they were going on. That was cool to us. Nate and I were going like, ‘Oh my God, that was LeBron James.’ And now we devise plans to beat those guys.”
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There were some detours along the way.
After two seasons together at South Dakota, Nurse left on his lengthy tour through the British Basketball League and Bjorkgren eventually went on to become a successful high school coach in Arizona after his university playing career was over.
But their paths to the NBA All-Star Game began more than a decade later in 2007. Nurse returned from Europe and became the head coach of the Iowa Energy in Des Moines, with the expansion franchise in what was then the NBA Development League, now the G League.
Bjorkgren heard about it and so began a mission.
“He just called me up, he wouldn’t leave me alone,” recalls Nurse. “[He] said he wanted to be an assistant… and he wouldn’t go away. And I was like, ‘It’s the D-League, I guess I got one assistant, I’ll take another one if the price is right.’ So he hung in there, he volunteered [in Year 1] and I think Year 2 we paid him $500, I think, and Year 3 $2,500 and the other guy finally left and he made $25,000 Year 4 so he was beside himself.”
“I always wanted to get into pro basketball,” says Bjorkgren. “When he was named coach of the Iowa Energy, I was emailing and calling and knocking on the door because I wanted that opportunity to coach pro players. … That was the opportunity. That’s what took me.”
It’s not what paid him though. Bjorkgren was able to coach for free because he took on substitute teaching roles at a pair of local elementary schools – Cattel Elementary and Walnut Street – and was able to come to an understanding with a very sympathetic boss.
“I had a great principal that she would let me do all the morning duties and all the lunch duties so I could get out of there at 12:30 to go to practice,” says Bjorkgren. “I’ll never forget it. And then after school sometimes, I’d hop in my car and drive to the road games.”
It was that unwavering dedication that caught Nurse’s attention.
“I didn’t know him all that well as a coach,” says Nurse. “To be honest we took him because we could use the extra pair of hands around. But then it was total dedication from minute one. We spent literally, I don’t know how many hours together, 12, 16, 18 hours a day trying to figure out how to win in the D-League and lots of time, we’d go to practice and he’d [drive] all the players back home or whatever and we’d meet again and watch D-League games all night at his apartment and all that kind of stuff. It was pretty evident pretty quickly that he was going to be a really good basketball coach, his care level was up, and the biggest thing is he’s a super-positive guy.”
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If Nurse’s trademark is his confident, easy-going chill, Bjorkgren’s trademark is a seemingly natural tendency to see the bright side of things; a rock-solid belief that the best is around the corner.
He does it with an earnestness that is rare in an NBA world where cool rules, and it’s welcome.
“I think Nate’s fun,” says Siakam. “I hear him all the time in my ear talking about something. Every morning he’ll say hi to you and give you a dab. He’s present and I think his energy is felt and needed on this team. He’s a great guy to have, a great coach and somebody who is a likeable person and so serious about his job … Nate’s fun.”
Bjorkgren doesn’t discriminate. Walk around the halls at Scotiabank Arena and it’s common to see him dabbing up security staff, maintenance staff and even reporters.
“We gotta get this one,” he’ll say.
It was one of the qualities that stood out when Bjorkgren was coaching for nothing in the D-League.
Gary Garner saw it first-hand when he worked with Nurse and Bjorkgren as Nurse’s lead assistant with the Energy. Garner was a long-time Division I head coach at the time and connected with Nurse through the team’s owner. He quickly came to appreciate Nurse’s overall abilities – “student of the game,” “fire in the belly,” “great feel for the team and each of his players” were among Garner’s Nurse-related superlatives, but he was also quickly impressed by Bjorkgren.
“The best volunteer assistant coach in the history of basketball,” says Garner, now the head coach at Dakota State University. “He just worked his butt off. Ran from teaching school to the arena, wanted to learn everything he could. You knew he was going to make it in coaching, someway, somehow. But most importantly just a really good guy. I could talk about him for 20 minutes and not have a negative thing to say about him.”
Within the Raptors eco-system, Bjorkgren serves as a sounding board and Nurse whisperer, a gift honed after years in the trenches together.
“They have a special bond,” says Adrian Griffin, who – along with Sergio Scariolo – rounds out Nurse’s staff of assistants, the core of a much larger basketball operations group. “Everyone needs someone they can lean on, their right-hand man that they can confide in. That’s priceless. [Nate] is kind of the glue that keeps everyone together. Every staff is like a team in itself and everyone brings something to the team. Nate brings that togetherness. A lot of times I’ll go to Nate before I go to Nick, just because he knows him so well.
Bjorkgren also serves as an in-game flashlight when things fog over; for those moments when Toronto is down 10 and hasn’t hit a three for going on a full quarter and even Nurse’s cool gets tested.
“He’s the guy sitting next to me when I’m sensing disaster going on in a game and he’s saying, ‘We’re gonna win, we’re gonna come back, constantly, we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna come back,’ and then helps me out quite a bit,” says Nurse. “… I love it and that’s the thing I keep saying, his sense of positivity is off the charts, in those games he’s always confident we’re gonna win and he keeps saying it and he keeps prodding everybody and it spreads. He helps teams win … when I’m constantly saying, ‘We’re in trouble, we ain’t got it, we’re not moving, what’s wrong with us,’ blah blah blah and then I get those out and he’s got me back on track. He might say ‘Do something then, change defences or something,’ [or just] ‘Be quiet!’”
Being around Bjorkgren, you get the sense that the positivity comes easily, but he’s also made it a conscious choice.
“That’s the fun part of it, that’s why I coach basketball,” says Bjorkgren, who was an assistant coach with the Phoenix Suns before Nurse tapped him to join his Raptors staff in the summer of 2018. “I always had fun playing it when I was a little kid. After college I couldn’t play it anymore, so I just wanted to keep having fun while I coached it.”
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Being in the NBA hasn’t changed a thing for Bjorkgren.
“I’m biased. I think [Nurse] does an excellent job. I think our players play their hearts out for us [and] I’m happy to assist in any way I can at that,” he says. “One of my strengths is being positive. I wanna win really, really bad. I want to win every night. And I think being positive is the best way to do that.
“In the games that we have, these NBA games that you see so much, there are so many highs and lows. You’ve got to always stay positive. You might get down eight, nine, 10 points, but if you put your head down and start pouting, you’re going to get deep. These games can turn quickly. I think it’s very important to stay positive throughout all areas of the game.”
It was a quality that Nurse eventually deemed indispensable, although they each had to go their separate ways before they could reconnect. After four years working together in Des Moines – which culminated with the Energy winning the D-League title in 2011 – Nurse took a job with the Rio Grande Vipers, the Houston Rockets’ affiliate, while Bjorkgren got his head-coaching opportunity with the Dakota Wizards – which became the Santa Cruz Warriors, the Golden State Warriors G League team.
Each found great success, and in 2013 found themselves opposing each other in the G League championship finals. It was one of the only times their coaching bromance was put on hold.
“We spoke to each other all year about games and all that and then we just shut it off,” says Bjorkgren. “We didn’t speak to each other for a week, week-and-a-half – they beat us in two games.”
But it was the conversation they had after the final buzzer sounded that was the most meaningful and prophetic.
“After the game – this my favourite story of all that – when we shook hands, he said there is no reason we can’t do this at the next level.
“That meant a lot [to me] and here we are coaching this team today.”
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
