Nurse on Raptors’ near-comeback, Trent’s ejection vs. Bulls

The Raptors nearly managed a comeback on the second night of a back to back against the Bulls — in large part due to Gary Trent Jr.’s 32 points. But crucial free-throw misses and Trent’s eventual ejection in the fourth quarter posted added challenges to Nick Nurse’s team.

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Video Transcript

- Hey, Nick. Really tough loss today. Leaving some shots at the free throw line must have cost you. And Gary getting ejected there at the end sort of took your best shooter and offensive threat away, what-- what did you see on that play?

NICK NURSE: Well, yeah, first of all, I'll address the first part. We did leave, you know, a bunch of points at the free throw line. And I think, the nature of this game, you probably can't get away with that.

- Yeah.

NICK NURSE: Right? [INAUDIBLE] on a back to back against a good team playing on the road, et cetera. First thing, I mean, the second one, I mean, I watched it but obviously I don't have any sound or audio down there on that Doug. I think, you know, it's a huge play. I'm sure you guys watched it several times. I thought, he for sure got fouled. And I saw him turn and, kind of, hit his arm to the ref to say, Hey he hit me on the arm.

So possible a couple of points [AUDIO OUT] there. And like you said, we lose-- we lose Gary as well. Didn't seem too bad, but then I gotta see exactly what happened. I don't know exactly what happened, but it didn't seem too-- what do they call it? Seems like it probably was a heat of the moment thing that he stopped right away, you know what I mean?

- Yeah, yeah. But again, you know, you guys-- you got way behind, but they played hard right until the end. And you talk about getting reps for young kids in crucial situations, Delano and Scottie got a lot of them tonight.

NICK NURSE: Yeah, and they did a good job with them too, Doug. I think, again, that's-- that's a pretty big stage. You know, and again, a really good team and-- but you're right, I thought we really, you know, we certainly struggled early to guard them but we made some adjustments and the guys really executed them. I thought we did a really good job defensively. Even a lot of the baskets they got late, were balls getting tipped around.

And somehow, they'd come up with it and get an end run out of it, or we just about tipped a couple of other ones away. You know, even the kind of game winning one. You know, we had an out of bounds there late and they were in trouble. And Chris makes a hard play and just got unlucky and committed a foul at two seconds on the shot clock. And even the last play that Vucevic got was-- the ball tipped away again and we were scrambling after it, and he hit a deep three. So there was a lot of that. So you can't fault our guys for the hustle and effort on that.

And then I thought we dissected them pretty good at the other end too. We weren't probably getting some great looks, but then we started, you know, getting some transition, we started getting some good post reads, we started, you know, kicking out. You know, I thought we were getting quality shots. And it's too bad I think-- I know we had two wide open 3's to tie it with about inside a minute and a half, OG had one and Chris had one. I mean, just point blank wide open, and we might have had a third in there somewhere. Actually I can't-- I can't remember.

- You're looking at a kid like Delano, who was playing what? His fourth game in four days, in a really tough atmosphere. What do you see about his composure in close games that are hard games for a young kid?

NICK NURSE: Yeah I mean, I think the biggest thing, Doug, with the current lineup for us is he seems to add just a an air of confidence to the offense. Right? Just there's-- there's some pace buckets, there's some transition things, there's some pretty good reads. And I don't see, I gotta watch the tape closely, but I don't see any major deficiencies at the other end. In fact, probably above average at the other end too, you know. He's got-- get's his hands on some balls with his length, he's really working hard on his match ups, and things like that.

- Thanks very much. Safe trip to Miami.

NICK NURSE: Thanks, Doug.

- Thanks, Doug. Let's go to Erin.

- Hey, Nick. You guys seem to have this trend, where you fall behind and then fix everything in the second half. Does that say something about, like, the first half being a struggle or what you guys are doing at halftime or something? I don't know what goes on in that locker room, but it seems to be working for you guys at halftime. Why does this keep happening?

NICK NURSE: Well, I don't know. I don't-- it maybe depends what you, I guess, trend is is it's probably something that's going on right now. I don't-- I mean, yeah, I mean, we certainly every single game whether we're ahead or behind, make adjustments at halftime. And it just probably seems like they have more of an impact when you're coming from behind. But I don't-- I don't read a whole lot into that.

- OK. Thanks, Nick.

NICK NURSE: That's OK. Thanks Erin.

- Thanks Erin, let's go to [INAUDIBLE]

- Hey, Nick. OG's had more occasions this season, where he's had the ball late clock and he's had to make something happen tonight. And there were a couple of times where he made, you know, he was able to penetrate, get a kick out for look at a 3, sometimes he created his own look. What have you made of his process overall with those scenarios this season?

NICK NURSE: Yeah, again, I think any of our main, you know, offensive threats need to be put in multiple scenarios. You know, it's post ups, it's drives, it's pick and rolls. And then the more reps they get, the better they can get at finding the right reads and situations. So I think Pascal-- we talked a lot about Pascal doing it lately here. You know, they really [INAUDIBLE] game [INAUDIBLE] hard for him. And I thought he really did a great job early in the game of finding people. And then OG, just, you know, he was solid scout, he's going to get those opportunities. Obviously, Fred is too.

- Thank you, Nick.

NICK NURSE: You're welcome.

- Thanks very much [INAUDIBLE]. I don't see any more hands for you coach, thanks for the time.

NICK NURSE: Thank you, all right.