How Nick Nurse went from rookie NBA head coach to champion

Over the course of a championship season, there are little moments, there are big moments, sequences of time that make you wonder if that will be a defining moment or a mere blip on the radar.

For someone who’s a head coach at the NBA level for the first time in his career, those moments can be misinterpreted, mishandled, or miscommunicated in ways that could not only be detrimental to the ultimate goal, but completely take a season off the rails.

Nick Nurse isn’t your typical rookie NBA head coach, though, and years of experience across the globe and at different levels are what finally brought him to the helm in Toronto. Here’s a look back at how the Iowa native built towards becoming a champion in his first season.

The centre rotation

Over the course of the past two seasons, Jonas Valanciunas and Serge Ibaka played alongside each other to great effect in the regular season, but struggled for success against a Cleveland Cavaliers team that stretched them to the perimeter.

Both players prefer to play on the interior, but Ibaka struggled to find his best form at power forward. One of the big changes made to this year’s edition of the Raptors was to commit to both players playing exclusively as centres, which meant engaging in a time-share between the two. This showed Nurse’s willingness to commit to play a modern-day style, even it came at the consequence of fracturing a few egos.

Ibaka steadily made himself the more prominent fit, and assumed the role full-time once Jonas Valanciunas was ruled out for a couple of months due to a dislocation of his thumb. In the midst of an excellent redemption campaign, though, it all came to a screeching halt with the acquisition of Marc Gasol.

After a stretch of games where Nurse tried to see what was what and ease Gasol into the system, Ibaka was benched. This had the potential to be a situation that lingered, that provided an unnecessary burden to the team and cause its fair share of conflict. Of course, it helped that Gasol and Ibaka have been teammates on the Spanish national team, but the man management of Nurse to ensure both players were able to keep their eyes on the prize until they finally got it is commendable.

The Kawhi call-out

Calling out the best player on your team in your first season as head coach of an NBA team takes serious guts. Doing it on the back of him scoring 20-plus points in 22 straight games and under the cloud of free agency is going deep into some murky waters to say the very least.

After Leonard’s streak ended, he shot 34.5 percent from the field in four games and didn’t break the 20-point barrier in three of the game, leading to Nurse’s bold move.

“I just think he’s got to get a little more engaged, right? Just a little bit more engaged,” Nurse said before playing the Brooklyn Nets on Feb. 11, the penultimate game before the all-star break. “And look for some motivation, right? To go out there and, I dunno, do his thing. I always say go out there and destroy some people or whatever it is. You know? You’ve got to get motivated.

“I’m kind of being serious about it. He needs to find a little bit of fire once in a while to go out there and say, ‘You know what? I’m getting 35 or 40 tonight,’ you know?”

This could have gone either way. Leonard could have taken it as a slight and responded negatively, but instead, actually gained respect for a coach who was willing to trust his gut and what he was seeing out on the floor.

“When a coach is like that, you want that motivation,” Leonard told the media after the game. “They can see it. They’re looking in between the lines of the game. Even if you’re going out there and having 20 points and you win, you want a coach that motivates you and tells you what you’re still doing that’s negative on the floor and costing your team. I appreciate him putting that in the air.”

The relationship between star player and coach only grew since that moment and the transparency the two share could be a pivotal aspect in Leonard’s free agency decision.

The lack of panic

22 games missed for Leonard largely due to load management? No problem. 17 missed game for Kyle Lowry? Manageable. Add another 18 for Fred VanVleet and even more for Valanciunas while he was on the team and there was still never any sign of panic or frustration on the part of Nurse.

He consistently recalled how he hardly ever knew who would be available to him until close to tip-off at the developmental league level, so Nurse just looked at the injuries that befell the team over the course of the regular season as par for the course.

The Raptors faced series deficits in each of the first three rounds they played, and each time they came away with the four wins they needed to advance. They became the first team in NBA history to win the Larry O’Brien trophy despite trailing in each of the first three rounds, displaying a resolve and sense of poise unlike any team in the past.

Over and over, Nurse stressed the importance of taking each game as it comes. That there was never a need to get too low after a loss, nor any appeal to getting too high after a win.

Keeping the faith when no one else wanted to

Just as Nurse showed he’s his own man and goes with his gut when he called out Leonard, the trust he showed in playing VanVleet when he looked unplayable early in the post-season, Ibaka when he struggled, or even Gasol after the immense struggles he had in the first two games of the series against Milwaukee played an integral role in getting the best out of them at the times he most needed them.

When Lowry fouled out of Game 3 against Milwaukee, the odds were stacked against a Toronto team trailing 0-2 in the series with Leonard on one leg and noted Bucks-killer Norman Powell fouled out.

VanVleet did just enough to help the Raptors get out of that jam, before catching fire for the rest of the playoffs and even earning himself a single Finals MVP vote.

FVV Sr. indeed.

Pushing Pascal Siakam to the forefront

This may actually go down as the most underrated aspect of Nurse’s season. Think about where Siakam was two seasons ago, then last year, and then think about the role he was thrust into this season.

The emergence of Siakam this season and his stellar Most Improved Player campaign just doesn’t happen without Nurse giving him the keys and saying go ahead and throw whatever you want at the wall and let’s see what sticks.

From the spin move to the three-point shooting to leading his team out on the break as the primary ball handler, Nurse helped Siakam develop into the Swiss Army knife he is and play a crucial role in Toronto’s championship run.

Box-and-one

The decision to turn to this defensive zone strategy is more symbolic than anything. The fact that Nurse was willing to turn to a scheme people rarely see outside high school in the NBA Finals speaks volumes of his willingness to experiment and complete disregard for the fear for failure.

Golden State was left flummoxed by the move in Game 2 which allowed for a near miraculous comeback to be completed, he then brought it out in Game 3 with Klay Thompson absent once again, and then again in Game 6 after Thompson left with a knee injury.

There were times where — after hardly playing two bigs together in the regular season — he felt the need for Gasol and Ibaka to pair up, even going ultra big with Siakam as the small forward momentarily.

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