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Nick Nurse wins NBA Coach of the Year award in second season with the Raptors

Toronto’s Nick Nurse won the league’s top coaching award on Saturday.

Nurse was named the NBA’s Coach of the Year, running away with the award in just his second year as a head coach in the league.

Nick Nurse received majority of 1st place votes

Nurse earned 90 first-place votes among the 100 media members who voted, picking up 470 total points. Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer came in second with five first-place votes. Oklahoma City Thunder coach Billy Donovan came in third.

Both Donovan and Budenholzer tied for the National Basketball Coaches Association Coach of the Year award earlier this month — an award voted on by the league’s 30 coaches. Nurse came in third in that race.

Saturday’s award, like the rest of the NBA’s superlatives this season, was based just on the season before play was halted in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic — and did not include anything that has happened so far inside the bubble at Walt Disney World.

The Iowa native led the Raptors to a 46-18 record when play was shut down, the second-best in the Eastern Conference at that time, and helped secure the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs inside the bubble. The team currently holds a 3-0 lead over the Brooklyn Nets in their opening-round series.

Nurse — who led the Raptors to their first NBA title last season after previously serving on staff as an assistant for five years — had earned the NBA D-League Coach of the Year award in 2010-11 while with the Iowa Energy. The 53-year-old is now the first coach to ever earn the top award in both leagues.

He is the third coach to ever win the award in Toronto, joining Sam Mitchell in 2006-07 and Dwane Casey in 2017-18.

Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse
Raptors coach Nick Nurse ran away with the league’s top coaching award on Saturday, earning 90 of a possible 100 first place votes. (Ashley Landis-Pool/Getty Images)

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