Everything Nick Nurse

[Hotshot]

FVV said the same thing the other day. We need depth and we need SHOOTERS.

Bring back Jalen Harris to a camp deal.

[TrueTorontoFan]

Bring back Jalen Harris to a camp deal.

eh... lets see him at summer league if his schedule works out.

[The Great One]

lmao

[The Great One]

This dude is trolling the Lakers lol.

[golden]

This dude is trolling the Lakers lol.

That's what I'm talking about.

[G__Deane]

Lasai reads RR confirmed. Lakers rumour gave him a free gift to pump Raptor tires

[KeonClark]

lmao

Better chance of kobe coming from the dead to play for the Raptors. Masai is a savage

[golden]

Lasai reads RR confirmed. Lakers rumour gave him a free gift to pump Raptor tires

Anytime you have an opportunity to mock the LA or NY teams…. you take it.

[KeonClark]

Lasai reads RR confirmed. Lakers rumour gave him a free gift to pump Raptor tires

Bad typo, Masai has never had an L In his life.

[G__Deane]

https://www.sportsnet.ca/nba/article...to-go-further/

Early Monday afternoon Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse and vice-chairman Masai Ujiri were scheduled to sit down for a face-to-face post-mortem on the season that was, and to kick into gear a plan for the year to come.

After the platitudes, there is plenty to talk about.

The Raptors' over-achieving bounce back from the Tampa Tank is already fading in the rearview.

It’s not that it doesn’t deserve its proper respect: Going from missing the playoffs and picking No. 4 overall in 2020-21 to a 48-win season and fifth seed in the East, culminating in a disappointing but understandable six-game, first-round loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, is nothing to scoff at.

But Nurse is not a patient coach. The goal a year from now is to be competing into late May, if not June, and a lot of things have to go right for it to happen.

Working in the Raptors' favour is that Nurse believes he’s on the same page as the team’s executive and they share a similar view that getting back to championship contention is a short-term, rather than long-term goal.

Nurse dismissed a report from early April that the Los Angeles Lakers (whose stars are represented by the same agency that represents him) would be trying to lure him west to sort out their problems – “I don’t know where that stuff comes from,” Nurse said.

But he emphasized that returning to the NBA’s elite is a priority for 2022-23.

“I'm not that great at planning in the future,” said Nurse as part of a wide-ranging, 45-minute media availability at the Raptors practice facility Monday morning. “Like, if you're trying to time it out when you think we have another shot to win [a championship], well, I'm ready. I'm ready to get back in the hunt today.

“I coach to win.”

In that sense, Nurse believes he’s in a good place, at least for the moment. Next season will mark his 10^th with the franchise and his fifth as head coach. Only five coaches have been with their teams longer. He’s got two more years left on a deal believed to pay him $8 million a season. Chances are what happens over the next year or so will go a long way towards Nurse becoming for the Raptors what Eric Spoelstra – who is hunting his third title in season 13 – is for the Miami Heat: less a coach and more a cultural cornerstone.

But first things first: each side will be looking for progress this coming season.

“I think that I've always said this: Masai and I have a great relationship, I think mostly because we want to win championships,” said Nurse. “I mean, it's about trying to figure out how to win at all.

“That's, that's what I sense [Ujiri’s] trying to do every day and that's what I'm trying to do every day. And that's really important, I think that goes a long way in terms of synergy, for me.

“And he has conversations with me about my coaching and I have conversations with him about the roster … and we're going to make some moves to go forward. Like, how can we coach better, how can we play or develop better and how can we get the roster better? How can we get better and get to where we want to go? It was a great season, but you know first-round exit is not what we want to do.”

So, about that roster.

If you were watching all season, you may have noticed a few things about how the Raptors played and what they struggled with. Chances are, they’re not all that different than what Nurse was trying to manoeuvre his way around: working with a roster that had talent, but was a puzzle with a lot of odd-shaped parts as well.

As a team, they didn’t shoot very well (27^th in True Shooting percentage), lacked a lob threat (the Raptors were 19^th in dunks as a team and didn’t have a player in the top forty for dunks individually), got almost no production from anyone outside of their top-seven players and were last in bench scoring.

“I said this early in the year, you can’t go into a season with eight or nine guys anymore, you can’t. There’s Covid that knocks a bunch of guys out and ever-prevalent injuries seem to be way more frequent than I can remember,” said Nurse. “… So whatever reason that is it means your ninth, 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, 13^th, 14^th guys better be able to go out there and play and not just look like it once and while, they’ve gotta be players. So that would be my first thing, we’ve gotta get some depth to keep up with the times.

“[Also] we could probably use some catch-and-shoot. I’m still after some more wing players, some more athletic wing players so we can continue to come at you in the style of play we want to come at you with.”

And lob threat?

“That would help too. I think that probably lifts a little bit of pressure for guys like Fred [VanVleet] and Gary [Trent Jr.], OG [Anunoby], those guys that could get more open corner looks because of the pressure being put on the rim on the weak side.”


But Nurse is hoping that his club can maintain the advantage they gained by winning the possession battle, but still be a more effective club offensively. He would love more depth, more shooting and a lob threat, but he wants more rangy wing players too, or at least he wants the ones he has to be able to fill in more of the existing gaps.

He’s still all-in on ‘vision 6-foot-9’.

“What I would say is I really like the length and all that stuff,” said Nurse. “What I would say is we need to get those guys more versatile. We need bigger guys that can guard smaller guys and bigger guys or schemes that can guard bigger guys when there’s an extreme at either end.”

[slaw]

Read that Nurse article and the end describes what is interesting to me about this off season. Could the Raps use catch and shoot players? For sure. Could they use a "lob threat"? Sure. But can they find guys that fit those bills who can guard both bigger and smaller guys and are also "versatile"? That I am not so sure about, especially contrasting it with the fact they are apparently still all-in on the 6'9 thing.

Go look at 2022 free agents and tell me how many of those guys fit with this Raps team and will get on the floor. It's not a long list at all. Like, Dalano Banton has a better shot at making it work than most of the obtainable free agents.

[The Great One]

Phil Jackson can't get his protege Nurse to the Lakers so why not hire Nurse's assistant instead?

[G__Deane]

We contnue to be breeding ground for future head coaches for better or worse.

[golden]

Would be happy for him, but losing Adrian Griffin would be a big loss. I believe he's been our main defensive co-ordinator since the championship season.

[The Great One]

My money is on Griffin getting the LA job UNLESS a big name coach suddenly becomes available.

See, it's all connected. Nurse was the Lakers #1 choice imo. I told you all a couple of weeks ago when the Lakers/Nurse rumours started that Phil Jackson was seen at a Lakers game and that there were rumours that he's advising the team. A couple of days ago the Lakers officially announced that Phil Jackson will advise the Lakers in their search for a new head coach. Masai pretty much shutdown the Lakers/Nurse rumour yesterday. And now that the Lakers know that they can't get Nurse they're going after his assistant lol.