In one of his former team’s many low points this season, the debate over why the Toronto Raptors didn’t capitalize on suspicion from league officials.
The Raptors were in Los Angeles, a few nights after a controversial streak of calls against them in a loss against Denver and a practice the next day guarding the Raptors Fred VanVleet He revealed a tumultuous saga throughout against the refereeing situation in general and Ben Taylor specifically, who was hit by a technical foul at a crucial point during the loss to the Clippers.
In a moment of exasperation, and as a matter of explanation, Raptors coach Nick Nurse summed up the Raptors’ refereeing problems this way: “It’s an All-Star league, and we don’t have one.”
He had a point. the post-Kawhi Leonard The Raptors have had plenty of stellar players – all-NBA and all-stars – but no one can meet that vague definition of a superstar.
.acf-block-preview .br-snippet { display: grid; template grid columns: 200px 1fr; gap: 20px; width: 100%; margin: 0 auto; padding: 16px; border: 1px solid #CECE; background-color: #fff; border-radius: 4px; } .acf-block-preview .br-snippet-info a {text-decoration: none; } .acf-block-preview .br-snippet-info .br-snippet-title {color: #343434; font-family: ‘roboto’; font-size: 20px; line weight: 600; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 10px; top: -3px; } .acf-block-preview .br-snippet-info .br-snippet-body {color: #343434; font-family: ‘urw-din’; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 12px; } .acf-block-preview .br-snippet-info .br-snippet-link-title {display: inline-block; font-family: ‘urw-din’; font-size: 16px; list-style-type: none; display: auto; } .acf-block-preview .br-snippet-info .br-snippet-link-title: not (:last-child): after { content: ‘| “; color: #343434; }
But the nurse will no longer have this problem. Since being fired in April after five years as a head coach in Toronto, Nurse has been the belle of the NBA coaching circuit, shortlisting job openings in Milwaukee, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, and in each case considering team coaching opportunities. The league’s best players are in or near their prime. Each job offered an opportunity to coach the best player in the NBA.
And Monday evening it was reported that Philadelphia Seventy Sixers Hired nurse, pairs 2019-20 Coach of the Year with sports’ biggest star – literally -, 2022-23 MVP Joel Embiid
Getting superstar calls shouldn’t be a problem. Embiid won his first MVP award last season after finishing second the past two years in part by leading the NBA in scoring with 33.1 points a game, a total assisted by 11.9 free throw attempts per game, second-most in the league and the game. For the fourth time in five years his average was in double digits.
For the second time in his career, Nurse will have the opportunity to organize a team around one of the best players in the world. It was the first time Leonard and, as anyone knows, the then-rookie Raptors coach didn’t fumble in the bag: Leonard and a deep, veteran team rode to the 2019 NBA title.
How he handled himself during this run – Unearthed a defensive scheme that mostly frustrated Embiid in a seven-game second-round series, later slowing Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference Finals and then reintroducing the world to ‘box-and-1’ ’ in the NBA Finals as the Raptors took advantage of the injury-stricken Golden State Warriors to use Fred VanVleet to take on Warriors superstar Steve Curry everywhere he went. “Junky defense,” Curry called it, but it worked.
Nurse did himself one better in the 2019-20 season after leaving Leonard Raptors for the Los Angeles Clippers in free agency when he led Toronto to the second-best record in the NBA – and the best winning percentage in Raptors franchise history – before falling to the Celtics in the round series. Second in the NBA bubble.
Those first two seasons did a lot of the heavy lifting for the coach and his reputation, which is a significant benefit in a business as subjective and reputation-driven as coaching the NBA.
Take those two years away and you’ll be a trained Nurse with some question marks. His teams finished in the lottery twice, and in the year they didn’t, Toronto managed a surprising 48-win season in the 2021-22 season on the strength of — evidently in retrospect — their desire to play more rookies. More than any coach in the league and a rush in the second half buoyed by the unwillingness of many visiting teams to bring their best players across the Canada-US border for fear of being stranded by a positive COVID test.
Still, Nurse deserves a lot of credit for figuring out how to win games with a flawed Raptors lineup. He leaned heavily on a style of play designed to give the offensively challenging Toronto club a chance to work around their weaknesses by emphasizing offensive rebounding and forced turnovers. If Toronto wasn’t a good shooting team or was blessed with the kind of uncanny presence that could flex defenses on its own, the plan was to get more shot attempts than their opponents, and hope to overwhelm them with big size.
No team has taken more shots off their opponents more often in the past two seasons than the Raptors.
The Sixers present an entirely different challenge.
In Embiid they have the most dominant offensive presence in the game and – when he chooses to be – arguably the most influential defender as well.
But the Cameroonian great entering his eighth season has his flaws and no one has been better at exploiting him during his later years than Nurse as his side would double down and harass Embiid to frustration and beyond.
Embiid’s scoring average against Nurse’s Raptors teams is 22.3 points a game, the lowest against any team he has played at least 10 times. In 13 playoff games against the Raptors Embiid averaged just 21.2 points (on 44 percent shooting) while coughing up a whopping 3.7 turnovers per game.
Over time, the nurse appeared to acquire some prime real estate in Ras Embiid. During the Sixers’ first-round playoff victory over the Raptors in 2021-22, Embiid complained about Nurse’s fondness for working referees: “I told him to stop booing about the calls,” Embiid said.
After a regular season win over the Raptors this year, during which the Raptors put heavy resources into limiting Embiid’s touchdowns and shot attempts only to have teammate DeAnthony Milton step up and hit three goals, Embiid said of the Raptors’ nurse:
“They just want to shut down the other star players. But when you’re playing that, you have to be ready all night. You have to stay alert and have the confidence to keep shooting and hope you make it when they come in, and that’s what happens.” [Melton] I did tonight.”
But the game respects the game. And just as Nurse is said to have jumped at the opportunity to get one of the best players in the NBA to reach his potential — Embiid didn’t even pass the 76 after the second round — Embiid needs the former Raptors coach to succeed just as much the other way around.
The devil will be in the details. The Sixers need to know what to do with a suspended free agent James Harden. Signing him ties Philadelphia to a list that wasn’t good enough to get past the Celtics in the second round this season or Miami last year. But allowing Harden to leave in free agency — Houston is a rumored destination — leaves the Sixers without a point guard who averaged 21 points a game and led the NBA in assists. The pick-and-roll plays involving Harden and Embiid were some of the most efficient offensive options in the entire league.
Nurse will need to help Embiid work out defensive techniques like the one he used against him while training the Raptors.
The nurse will also be audited. At times over the past season, he seemed almost angry at the Raptors’ structural shortcomings. Early in the season, he considered Toronto’s shooting problems—the Raptors ranked 28th in effective field goal percentage—an idea that would correct itself as sample size increased.
As the season went on, losses mounted and shooting never changed, Nurse began citing how good the ‘look’ the Raptors had created. His favorite stat was a special “expected field goal percentage” based on the quality of chances Toronto was creating.
Apparently, it was pretty good, even with the bug buildup.
He wouldn’t have that option with the Sixers. Under any build, Nurse’s expectation would be to get the Embiid to the NBA Finals and beyond and continue to do so as long as the Sixers star is in uniform and in his prime.
This is the fun, pressure and price of training NBA stars. This is what the nurse signs up for.