Everything Nick Nurse

[KeonClark]

Yeah, well the Hawks full court press just proved without a shadow of a doubt that McCaw isn’t a “ball handler” either.

At this point, I’d rather bring in Skip to My Lou, or The Professor as ball handlers. At least it would be entertaining.

Anybody got the phone number for the globetrotter midget?

[inthepaint]

The problem is McCaw as a ball handler/offensive initiator is not a better option than Siakam or Powell or Davis. There's just no evidence to support the idea that McCaw actually has the skills for the role he's been typecast for - a defensive minded backup point guard. He isn't a great passer. He doesn't reduce turnovers. He doesn't run the offence very well or get guys easy looks. He doesn't defend well.

Davis can literally do the things McCaw supposedly does well just about as well as McCaw does, and some other things much better. But somehow McCaw has already become the go-to 3rd point guard and I keep hearing Davis is "not really a point guard."

This is a league where Lebron, Giannis, Harden, and Kawhi can run your offence either full-time or for significant stretches of games. It's a league where the John Stockton-type point guard has basically ceased to exist and most point guards would have been called combo or scoring guards 10+ years ago, guys like Curry and Westbrook and Kyrie etc.

How, with this roster and in this league, can we possibly need 25 mpg from Pat McCaw?

I agree that seems to be the coaching staff's opinion, just don't agree with it from where I'm sitting. Want to develop guys in this free ride season? Get Siakam running more (much more) offence. Get Davis running more offence. These guys are the future, why is Pat McCaw playing entire 4th quarters?

Oh for sure. It's a positional dogma on a positionless league. Reminiscent of the old Casey double and triple PG lineups with lots of Corey Joseph, Delon and Zo Brown, and an often overly heavy ride-or-die on Lowry.

It's a double head-scratcher because (a) the grounds for the typecasting of McCaw as ballhandler/playmaker is dubious at best (he was a PG in college but never in the NBA plus all the reasons you pointed out) AND (b) the necessity to run 2 or 3 "ballhandlers" all the time in today's league is also dubious, especially when you have guys that can run the offence from the frontcourt (your point forwards), like Gasol & Siakam (plus an elite classic PG in Lowry).

A traditional PG has 2 primary jobs:
1. Bring the ball across the timeline (including in press and in transition)
2. Call plays/direct traffic

Norm & Davis can do #1. Gasol can do #2. Lowry, FVV and likely Siakam can do both. The skill overlap makes it so that you don't need to overload Lowry/Fred/McCaw with minutes. This roster would be balanced with most coaches, but in Nurse's hands it's artificially in need of another PG, otherwise McCaw/Lowry/Fred will continue to rack up tons of minutes.

[slaw]

The ‘house money’ theory really doesn’t hold water for me.

Whether the chips are stacked against us or not, we should 100% be doing everything we possibly can to defend our title. Other than Giannis, we can beat anyone in this league on the right day. And it wouldn’t take too much for things to break a certain way where either Giannis goes down, or we figure something out and find a way to get past them.

No way should we be punting a season just cause we might have a better chance in a few years time.

100%. You never know what could happen next year, let alone 3-4 years down the road. And it's not like Raps have to mortgage the future.

[GOLDBLUM]

Nurse and the Raptors are playing with house money. We won a chip, and that at least gives me 5 years of do whatever you want. But the McCaw problem is pretty frustrating. Some really easy solutions, and I'm hoping our front office is looking at those.

But yeah, if he stays on the roster, and still gets 15-20mpg in the playoffs.. well it is what it is I guess. We're still always going to be champs.

The ‘house money’ theory really doesn’t hold water for me.

Whether the chips are stacked against us or not, we should 100% be doing everything we possibly can to defend our title. Other than Giannis, we can beat anyone in this league on the right day. And it wouldn’t take too much for things to break a certain way where either Giannis goes down, or we figure something out and find a way to get past them.

No way should we be punting a season just cause we might have a better chance in a few years time.

[S.R.]

The problem is McCaw as a ball handler/offensive initiator is not a better option than Siakam or Powell or Davis. There's just no evidence to support the idea that McCaw actually has the skills for the role he's been typecast for - a defensive minded backup point guard. He isn't a great passer. He doesn't reduce turnovers. He doesn't run the offence very well or get guys easy looks. He doesn't defend well.

Davis can literally do the things McCaw supposedly does well just about as well as McCaw does, and some other things much better. But somehow McCaw has already become the go-to 3rd point guard and I keep hearing Davis is "not really a point guard."

This is a league where Lebron, Giannis, Harden, and Kawhi can run your offence either full-time or for significant stretches of games. It's a league where the John Stockton-type point guard has basically ceased to exist and most point guards would have been called combo or scoring guards 10+ years ago, guys like Curry and Westbrook and Kyrie etc.

How, with this roster and in this league, can we possibly need 25 mpg from Pat McCaw?

I agree that seems to be the coaching staff's opinion, just don't agree with it from where I'm sitting. Want to develop guys in this free ride season? Get Siakam running more (much more) offence. Get Davis running more offence. These guys are the future, why is Pat McCaw playing entire 4th quarters?

[planetmars]

I’ve sometimes wondered whether Masai has an agenda and is like, Nick, I need you to play this guy, I believe in this guy.

Or...

perhaps Nick is super adamant about running a system with another ball-handler (obviously he is) and in spite of McCaw’s glaring weakness, is trying to force Masai’s hand to go out and get him a better one so his system can be at full strength.

Cause the weird part is it just keeps not working and not working and not working, so you start to really wonder what’s going on underneath the surface.

(all that said, by and large, we’re still winning ballgames)

Nurse and the Raptors are playing with house money. We won a chip, and that at least gives me 5 years of do whatever you want. But the McCaw problem is pretty frustrating. Some really easy solutions, and I'm hoping our front office is looking at those.

But yeah, if he stays on the roster, and still gets 15-20mpg in the playoffs.. well it is what it is I guess. We're still always going to be champs.

[GOLDBLUM]

I’ve sometimes wondered whether Masai has an agenda and is like, Nick, I need you to play this guy, I believe in this guy.

Or...

perhaps Nick is super adamant about running a system with another ball-handler (obviously he is) and in spite of McCaw’s glaring weakness, is trying to force Masai’s hand to go out and get him a better one so his system can be at full strength.

Cause the weird part is it just keeps not working and not working and not working, so you start to really wonder what’s going on underneath the surface.

(all that said, by and large, we’re still winning ballgames)

[golden]

I agree with this theory.. and that's why I think Masai needs to start shopping for legit backup PG's before the deadline. My preferred guy would be Ish Smith. Plays on a bad team, and has a really good contract. Tomas Satoransky from Chicago would be another.

Yeah, inthepaint makes a good point. As much as we don't like to admit it, McCaw quite possibly is our 3rd best dribbler. And Nurse puts a super-high premium on ball-handling. Unfortunately, the drop-off from Lowry/FVV to McCaw is like: {insert your analogy here}

[golden]

I agree with this theory.. and that's why I think Masai needs to start shopping for legit backup PG's before the deadline. My preferred guy would be Ish Smith. Plays on a bad team, and has a really good contract. Tomas Satoransky from Chicago would be another.

Satoransky would be a great pickup. He can shoot and guard 3 positions. Sounds like a Nurse guy. A few years back, every time John Wall got injured and the Wiz inserted Sato into the starting lineup, they always went on a bit of run. Probably says more about Wall than Sato, but at least he's shown himself to be a solid NBA multi-position guard.

[grindhouse]

Why is Matt Thomas not playing more

[planetmars]

My Nurse-McCaw theory is this:
1. Nurse sees this team as only having 3 true ballhandlers: Lowry, Fred and McCaw (even though Davis, Norm and Siakam can arguably function as ballhandlers)
2. He likes having at least 2 ballhandlers on the floor most of the time, especially on closing time.
3. If you need to have 2 out of Fred/Lowry/McCaw on the floor all the time, that by default will yield a lot of minutes to all of them, especially when there are injuries. That explains not only the inflated McCaw minutes everyone is pissed about, but also Lowry's (who currently leads the NBA in minutes) and Fred's (6th highest league-wide)

They say the modern game is positionless and he's an experimental coach, but this is one positional dogma he's hanging on to. That's concerning to me for different reasons: McCaw's minutes should go down because it's taking minutes away from better players, and Lowry's should go down because he's older and we want to conserve him for the playoffs. Fred's are probably okay, but if he's 6th leaguewide you gotta wonder if that usage/minutes is too high too.

It's almost like the team is short of "ballhandlers" (as defined by Nurse and his system), hence they're all getting heavy minutes. So I'd venture to guess if there were to be a move at the deadline it would be for another "Nurse ballhandler". I just hope that if that's case, the trade yields a net increase in talent and/or a pick, rather than a move to just fix an artificial shortage of ballhandlers.

I agree with this theory.. and that's why I think Masai needs to start shopping for legit backup PG's before the deadline. My preferred guy would be Ish Smith. Plays on a bad team, and has a really good contract. Tomas Satoransky from Chicago would be another.

[Puffer]

Yeah, well the Hawks full court press just proved without a shadow of a doubt that McCaw isn’t a “ball handler” either.

At this point, I’d rather bring in Skip to My Lou, or The Professor as ball handlers. At least it would be entertaining.

Preferable to McCaw.

[golden]

Yeah, well the Hawks full court press just proved without a shadow of a doubt that McCaw isn’t a “ball handler” either.

At this point, I’d rather bring in Skip to My Lou, or The Professor as ball handlers. At least it would be entertaining.

[inthepaint]

Believe this to be the case. We're starting both of our point guards. And TD hasn't earned (and rightfully so) the ability to run the offense yet. So this leave McCaw as our 3rd PG. We could play pascal as a defacto point guard with the 2nd unit but then we would have to stagger his minutes and lose alot of the starting unit fire power. Hopefully we can pick up a true 3rd PG in the buyout market and we don't have to see so much of patrick

Yep. Either that or Nurse adapts and adjust his rotation to fit the roster we have. Ideally, both McCaw's and Lowry's minutes would go down (for different reasons of course)

[bertarapsfan]

My Nurse-McCaw theory is this:

It's almost like the team is short of "ballhandlers" (as defined by Nurse and his system), hence they're all getting heavy minutes. So I'd venture to guess if there were to be a move at the deadline it would be for another "Nurse ballhandler". I just hope that if that's case, the trade yields a net increase in talent and/or a pick, rather than a move to just fix an artificial shortage of ballhandlers.

Believe this to be the case. We're starting both of our point guards. And TD hasn't earned (and rightfully so) the ability to run the offense yet. So this leave McCaw as our 3rd PG. We could play pascal as a defacto point guard with the 2nd unit but then we would have to stagger his minutes and lose alot of the starting unit fire power. Hopefully we can pick up a true 3rd PG in the buyout market and we don't have to see so much of patrick