'That’s a lot of misses': Nick Nurse on 18 missed free throws vs. Bulls

Toronto Raptors coach Nick Nurse discusses the several missed free throws against the Chicago Bulls and why his team collapsed in the 4th quarter.

Video Transcript

- Nick, I guess the 50% free throw shooting is obviously a huge issue. But [INAUDIBLE] 62 points in the second half. What-- what did they do that turned that around?

NICK NURSE: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, obviously, LaVine got super cook in there in the third. They were really spreading the floor on us and getting by kind of our first line of defense and getting it-- getting it deep towards the rim a lot and just using some really good athleticism and skill to finish a lot of those play through the hits and score and get a bunch of and ones as well.

But mostly, it was just our first line of defense up top really dug that started. I think-- I think we needed to adjust a little bit more. I thought it became pretty physical out on the perimeter. But we weren't quite using our arms and bodies enough to keep those guys in front. Yeah.

- I know free throw shooting is free throw shooting, but what do you think of your guys missing 50% of the [INAUDIBLE]?

NICK NURSE: Yeah, I mean, it's-- if you miss 50% of them when you're 5 for 10, it's probably not a big deal, right? But I mean, that's a lot of misses, right? So we left a lot of points on the board there for sure. I don't think that you're going to-- you know, you're not going to make them all in a game. But you know, I've said this to you before. I think, if you ever miss over 10 in a game, it's really hard to win, right?

But we still had our chances. Even with that, we still had our chances there. I thought we had one little stretch in the game where we just stopped completing passes. Like, we were getting into some double-- we were reading the double teams so well all night and finding people. And we had a couple of set plays that were really wide open.

And we just had about four or five really poor executed passing plays that there was things open and kind of set up for us to-- we kind of knew that's what we were going to and didn't make them. So that probably let us down too and let them get out in transition because they did get some transition buckets as well.

- What was your messaging to your team right now?

NICK NURSE: Right now? Nothing. I just said, listen, that was a tough one. I thought-- I thought they played really hard, I think, for the most part-- for the most part, we did a good job executing the game plan. We probably had more mistakes in our schemes in the first half than we did in the second. It just came down to kind of ISO on one defense and-- and-- in the second half.

So again, I thought they played-- they played tough. I thought, again, for the most part, they did a good job of trying to share the basketball and make the right plays on offense.

- Yeah, just a tough one, man. I feel bad for them. I think they tried-- I think they tried and played really hard. You talked a lot over the last few weeks about the importance of getting some of these guys some more playoff reps.

NICK NURSE: Yeah.

- How disappointing is it to not be able to go further and get those?

NICK NURSE: I mean, it's super disappointing. Listen, I think that-- I think that there's been times, especially even early in the season when we were just kind of hovering over 500, I think we had a really difficult schedule to start. But we were-- and we were a bucket away from a bunch of a big-- a big, you know, knocking off the teams that finished at the top, right? And that kind of-- you always got to pick off a couple of those when you got a chance.

And we didn't seem to be able to pick off-- pick off maybe three or four of them where we're right there at the last possession of the game. All right, I can kind of clearly remember some of those. So some of that stuff probably catches up to us in the end having to play in the play in with a few-- just a few more wins here or there. Maybe we can climb up and get there. But you know, I've always said, this is still-- there's still a lot of guys that need playoff experience, because, as you can see, it's different, right?

It's different. it's physical. It's pressure. It's a lot of high stakes and stuff. And you got to live through some of that to be able to get through some of it, right? So it is disappointing. I said that for two years now that we needed playoff games. So it's disappointing not to get any for sure.

- Finding contributions off [INAUDIBLE] is obviously a problem all year. What-- how much of a struggle was that, not only tonight but throughout the year?

NICK NURSE: Yeah, I don't-- I don't know. I mean, I certainly-- we were in a one-game scenario. I think we probably would have imagined most of our guys playing 35 to 40, 42, 44 minutes, you know? And we tried to do some things tonight to stagger it a little bit, to keep four starters out there, et cetera. But I don't know. I thought Precious played OK. And his limited minutes, he had a couple of really key offensive rebounds.

I thought he had four for the game. So I thought he did OK. And just a tough-- they play pretty small, so it's tough to get some of our backup bigs or our wings in that game with them playing so many guards.

- You went away from-- yeah, for a few possessions there. Was that just a product of the tough passing that you alluded to, the spacing.

NICK NURSE: No, I just-- we were just trying to get into a situation where we could maybe switch some of those screen and rolls. And we tried to get it so you know that OG, Scottie, and Freddy would be involved in the actions. And yeah, just trying to do that, giving us the-- also, just kind of hoping, you know, Gary had a couple of good looks. Kind of hoping he'd had a bunch of games this year where he not do much and make a couple of late 3s in the fourth.

So just kind of hoping maybe he would find one of those. And he actually got a couple of chances. Thought he was going to knock one down. It didn't work out.

- What kind of adjustments did you see the Bulls make if any in terms of the pick and roll of the Fred and Jak were running along early, maybe more success early? Did you see any of this [INAUDIBLE]?

NICK NURSE: Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, they were blitzing, putting two on Fred, even kind of stringing out into a corral, a soft blitz, et cetera. And then they just kind of started. They went small for a while and got into some up court pressure and went to one through five switching and just trying to make us beat them in ISO basketball, right? Yeah, and then they kind of stayed with the switching for probably the last quarter and a half. Yeah.

- Last question. [INAUDIBLE]

- Nick? Nick, I mean, how would you see off the season? it's, you know, kind of some [INAUDIBLE].

NICK NURSE: Yeah it was tough. Yeah, it was tough. I think we had some-- certainly, some up and downs. Michael, I think that we had, again-- I thought-- I thought we kind of came out of the gates playing pretty well. Then we had to weather some injuries, et cetera. And it was kind of funny. We kind of did that.

And then it seemed that once we got everybody back, the out of rhythm that kind of got us out of rhythm for a long stretch, took a couple of tough losses, probably didn't bounce out of that like we normally do. Usually, we get a loss to bounce back and get the next one. If we get two, we certainly get in the third one and had that stretch of about-- I don't know-- 12 games maybe-- 10 games, 12 games-- where we just didn't resemble ourselves for a while.

So we really had to get back to work. Again, I've told the guys several times in the last two weeks I'm proud of them for getting back six or seven games above-- below 500 and getting back to 500 because we did coach them hard and work them hard to get back to building and rebuilding some of the foundational stuff. But-- and again, I thought we played well enough to win tonight but just didn't-- just didn't go our way. Yeah, OK, thanks, everybody. Take care.