Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse directs his team during the first half of a game against the Charlotte Hornets in Charlotte, N.C., on April 2.Nell Redmond/The Associated Press
Slowly, the Toronto Raptors are turning from the NBA’s most interesting team into the mid-aughties Sacramento Kings.
We’re nearing the end of this years-long process. No one believes the Raptors are good anymore, nor do they seem very bothered about getting better anytime soon.
Most dangerously, they are boring. Nice guys and all, but incapable of creating buzz. The Raptors have become that friend who texts once a year on your birthday, asks ‘What’s up?’ and then you go back to benignly ignoring each other.
So good on Nick Nurse. Right at the death, the head coach has decided to pick a fight.
It’s a fight with his own team, which isn’t always the best idea professionally. But one must salute his effort to make some noise on the way out.
Nurse got the Raptors’ top job because the team couldn’t get anyone they really wanted. Unable to secure a big name, they went with the assistant coach they already knew. It didn’t seem like a weird choice until Kawhi Leonard was acquired a month later. Then it seemed quite weird.
There were about a million ways it could have gone wrong, prime among them Leonard turning to someone in the training gym and saying, ‘Tell that guy in the glasses to stop talking to me.’
But it didn’t. Even knowing how it ended up, the whole thing was shockingly smooth. The nobody head coach and the NBA’s most intimidating employee finding a middle way through the season. Mostly, that was Nurse asking Leonard what he wanted to do, and then doing that, but a lot of people in sports would have found a way to screw that up.
Nurse came out of that championship run a star. “Box and one.” That’s how most NBA fans will know him his whole life.
Being tagged an old-school, tactical savant was good for the Nurse brand. You could feel him growing into it. The ‘NN’ initialled baseball caps; taking his guitar on road trips; a guest appearance on Murdoch Mysteries.
Once a man has had six lines on Murdoch Mysteries, really, what other mountains are there for him to climb? You know life will never be that sweet again.
This new Showtime approach from the coach did not exactly jibe with the team the Raptors became once Leonard abandoned them. A great team became a mediocre team that still walked and talked like it was a good team. It fooled people. For a while.
Inevitably, people began to blame Nurse. ‘You’re such a genius? Then why can’t you box-and-one the Raptors to fourth place in the Eastern Conference? And, seriously, what’s with the hat?’
As a coach, the danger of accepting any little bit of credit is that you open yourself to all of the blame. Nurse walked into that one.
What do you do when your team is boring and you can’t think of a simple way to improve it? You get rid of the coach. It doesn’t make the players any better. But it does excite people, which is the real job of sports professionals. If you can’t excite them by winning, excite them by leaving. If you really want to knock their socks off, leave in a big huff.
The formerly tight ship run by Raptors president Masai Ujiri began popping leaks last week. Stories ran suggesting that Nurse not only wanted to leave, but knew where he was going – Houston. They also had his replacement picked out – former Boston head coach Ime Udoka, a Ujiri friend.
When that many specific, moving parts are included in a “sources say” story, it might as well be a team press release. It has roughly the same authority.
Nurse could have let the rumours pass him by and made it to the end of the year. That’s only a couple of weeks.
It shouldn’t have been hard. Torontonians may be tired of him, but nobody wishes him ill. Now he gets to go somewhere they think he’s the basketball Da Vinci who won Canada an NBA championship. It’s good news all around.
But, God love him, Nurse could not let it pass. Someone asked him about the rumours.
“I think when this season gets done, we’ll evaluate everything. And even personally, I’m going to take a few weeks to see where I’m at … just see how the relationship with the organization is and everything,” Nurse said. “It’s been 10 years for me now, which is a pretty good run.”
Just say ‘I quit.’ That’s what you’re actually saying there. Or ‘No comment.’ Or deflect. If you don’t want to be bothered by this, there are a lot of ways to avoid that.
Instead, Nurse went with coyness. Maybe he was feeling a little starved of attention. Maybe he wanted to create a PR problem for his bosses. Maybe he wanted to hear fans begging him to stay.
Whatever the case, coy is only good for reporters. It’s not good for the reported.
It is a constant wonder to me that some people who speak to the media every day never figure out a single thing about how they operate. But here we are again. Having turned a small, local fire into an NBA-wide media mushroom cloud, Nurse seems amazed the story won’t die.
He was asked about it again the other night. You could feel frustration coming off him like heat as he answered.
“I’m not … that’s exactly why I made it is to not have to answer that question every game, cuz I got it about three games in a row,” he said. “So let’s move on and talk about tonight and this team and this season, please.”
Print cannot properly capture the delightfully clipped way in which all of this was said, especially the pleading/threatening note on “please.”
Of course, no one cares what Nurse thinks anymore. The story is out of his control. It will dog the Raptors’ upcoming playoff run. When they lose, that’s his fault. If they somehow win, he won’t get any of the credit. Either way, he’ll leave under a cloud.
Considering all that happened on Nurse’s watch, it’s not a dignified exit. But nobody is promised dignity in professional sports. Regardless of what they accomplish, all they can depend on is a warm welcome upon arrival and a rough shove at the end.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
