Nick Nurse - Rapture: Fifteen Teams, Four Countries, One NBA Championship, and How to Find a Way to Win -- Damn Near Anywhere

1989: Assistant, University of Northern Iowa

1990: Player-Coach, Derby Rams (UK)

1991: Head Coach, Grand View University

1993: Assistant Coach, University of South Dakota

1995: Head Coach, Birmingham Bullets (UK)

1998: Head Coach, Telindus Oostende (Belgium)

1998: Head Coach, Manchester Giants (UK)

2000: Head Coach, London Towers (UK)

2001: Assistant Coach, Oklahoma Storm

2001: Head Coach, Brighton Bears (UK)

2005: Assistant Coach, Oklahoma Storm

2007: Head Coach, Iowa Energy

2009: Assistant Coach, Great Britain National Team

2011: Head Coach, Rio Grande Valley Vipers

2013: Assistant Coach, Toronto Raptors

2018: Head Coach, Toronto Raptors

2019: Head Coach, Canada National Team

Corn-Bred and Corn-Fed

Nick Nurse came out of his rental pickup with a big grin on his face and extended his hand. Never thought the beauty of Montana was this grand, he said. We shook, and I asked him to get into my truck for a drive around Flathead Lake. The trip is really quite longits a big lake. We made an early stop at a fruit stand and got a bag of washed cherries. Our conversation centered around people we knew but quickly got down to basketball. The sport is not the center of Nick Nurses life, although he takes it very seriously.

I titled this foreword Corn-Bred and Corn-Fed, but I dont mean that condescendingly. Nick exhibits his Midwestern sensibility quite naturally, even though he had to travel many roads to many places before he was given the chance to coach an NBA team. You even get the feeling that coaching any team is fine by him. Just look at his rsum and youll see the wide variety of basketball venues he successfully competed in before he finally got a shot at coaching in the NBA.

I first heard of Nick a few years ago from Alex McKechnie. Part of the triumvirate of medical support staff with my old team, the Los Angeles Lakers, Alex had come to LAjoining Gary Vitti, a long established Laker trainer, and Chip Schaefer, who was with me for all eleven of my titlesto help Shaq recover from an abdominal tear in the late 1990s, and he was then recruited to join the Lakers full-time in 2001. When the Lakers staff disbanded in 2011 before the lockout season, the training staff was released, except for Vitti. Alex found employment in Toronto, which was no surprise. We stayed in contact, and when Nick Nurse joined the Raptors staff, Alex had a lot of good things to say about him. Alex brokered the visit by Nurse to Flathead Lake after Nick was named head coach of the Toronto team in the summer of 2018. So here we were driving around the lake, eating cherries, talking hoops, and enjoying the day.

Nick let me know he had studied the triangle offense back in the day. In fact, he had watched the first practice I had with the Lakers at their summer camp in Long Beach back in 1999. At the time, he was just a young coach, but he was absorbing as much b-ball as he could find. During our drive, we talked about the advent of the present game with nary a post-up player cluttering the lane. The stats just verify the fact that three-point shots have supplanted two-point shots. I argued that even if 33 percent of made threes is the score equal of 50 percent made twos, 66 percent of those threes are still misses, which makes rebounding and transition defense risky. Offensive rebounds become a maybe thing and full-court pressure defense becomes impossible. What becomes the basis of a sound offense? I asked. I give Nick credit for taking the bait. He explained that his tenure with the Rio Grande Vipers of the NBA D-League gave him the chance to make a system out of three-point shooting. Passing and movement were still priorities. It wasnt all dribble and screen-and-roll.

We went back and forth for the rest of the ride around the lake and then at lunch at a roadside diner. Later that night we had dinner and talked more in terms of managing players, which is a very important skill in NBA coaching. How does a coach develop the confidence of the team? Nicks personality and ability to be a known entity to his players were real positives in his move to the head chair.

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Nick asked me to write this foreword and I was happy to do so. His book will give you a good idea of the dedication and focus it takes to win as a coach. He does have that Midwest sensibility and hard work ethic, not to mention a variety of interests. For example, he taught himself how to play the piano and has a love of Thelonious Monks genius. He even named his offense the Monk Offense (similar to Ron Ekkers) for its freestyle methods.

Coaching takes or makes a strong personalityone that understands that the coach is where the buck stops. This takes grit. Coaches have to point out the elephants in the room. Sometimes they take risks to bring players around to making changes in their game or in the teams. They have to have the verve to give the team confidence that everything is going to work out when things arent going smoothly. When situations are tenuous and there is a victory or defeat in the balance, they must be calm enough to allow the players to relax and enjoy the moment. Nicks passion is evident, and his decisiveness during the pressure of last years playoffs bodes well for his continued success. He just wants to coach.

Just before the 2020 All-Star Game, the Raptors were on a tear with a fifteen-game winning streak that has confounded basketball experts. After they lost Kawhi Leonard in free agency at the end of the previous season, experts thought the team would have trouble finishing in the top ranks, but Nick has made a career out of proving people wrong. Kudos to Nick Nursehe can coach.

March 2020 .