Nick Nurse understands he’s not going to be judged by regular-season wins. He’s taking over a team that is perennially near the top of the Eastern Conference standings, but has ended consecutive seasons with a whimper. It’s always nice to get the No. 1 seed, but it wouldn’t mean much for this particular group next season. The last time it happened, a second-round flameout followed.
Like anyone who accepts a head-coaching job, Nurse has thought about a few things he’d like to do differently on offense and defense. His main challenge, though, is to find “a collective path to peaking at the right time,” Nurse says.
Nurse says this after a summer league practice at a Las Vegas high school. It’s July 2018, weeks after the Toronto Raptors promoted him. He does not know that the Raptors will go on to slay their playoff demons and win their first championship the following June. He does not even know that they will soon trade for Kawhi Leonard. He certainly doesn’t know that, five years later, he’ll be in the same position, tasked with taking a theoretically top-tier team to the next level.
April, May, June
When Nurse took over the Raptors, he wanted them to be thinking about the playoffs before training camp had even begun, so he distributed rubber wristbands with “AMJ” — i.e. April, May, June — on them. Also on the wristbands was the phrase “expect to win,” a motto he’d first used as the coach of the Birmingham Bullets in 1995.
If he doesn’t have more of these made for the Philadelphia 76ers, he’ll at least deliver similar messages. The Sixers tried to get tougher and more playoff-ready last summer, and when they took a 3-2 lead against the Boston Celtics three weeks ago, it seemed like they might break through. Games 6 and 7, however, were the type of losses that can weigh a team down.
By firing Doc Rivers, Philadelphia was not blaming him for all that went wrong. Team president Daryl Morey said that Joel Embiid, the 2023 MVP, was “shocked” by the decision and that the front office would be looking for a replacement that shared many…
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