Toronto Raptors fire Nick Nurse after 5 seasons as head coach

The Toronto Raptors have fired head coach Nick Nurse.

The team announced Friday morning that Nurse has been relieved of his duties after spending five seasons at the helm, including coaching the team to an NBA championship in 2019.

“Tough times,” said Raptors president Masai Ujiri, addressing the media shortly after the announcement was made. “We want to wish Nick Nurse and his family the best of luck and thank him for everything he’s done for this organization. Including helping us win an incredible championship.”

The Raptors finished this past regular season below expectations with a 41-41 record, losing a play-in game to the Chicago Bulls last week, and finishing 10th place in the Eastern Conference. The team was plagued by inconsistency and never seemed to get fully on track.

“It’s been very disappointing for us,” Ujiri said. “We want to gain our momentum back as a team. All of the things that we have stood for here, I think we lacked this year.”

“There was never that feel of togetherness.”

Speculation about his coaching future followed Nurse for weeks leading up to the end of the season. Some media reports suggested a rift had formed between him and Ujiri.

The rumours came to a head at the end of March when Nurse said in a post-game news conference that he would have to think about his future in the off-season. He would go on to dismiss any notion of friction with the team’s front office in the days following his comments.

Some pundits were critical of Nurse’s apparent unwillingness to trust younger players, choosing instead to lean on his veterans and continually playing them heavy minutes. Ujiri said Friday he was not happy watching the development of the team’s younger players over the past two seasons.

When questioned why the head coach was dismissed in favour of a roster reconstruction, Ujiri said more changes to the team could be coming.

“We believe in the players we have, (but) whether it’s tweaks or major changes, we’re definitely going to look at everything,” Ujiri says. “We’ve got to build spirit back here. We need that back.”

Prior to joining the Raptors as an assistant in 2013, Nurse worked in the G League, winning two championships as a head coach.

He spent five years as an assistant before replacing Dwane Casey ahead of the 2018-19 championship season. He was named NBA Coach of the Year following the 2019-20 season and signed a contract extension heading into the next year.

The team made the playoffs three times during Nurse’s time in charge and he owns the best winning percentage in team history with 227 wins in 360 regular-season games.

Nurse leaves the Raptors with 1-year and $8 million remaining on his contract and is rumoured to be a lead candidate in the Houston Rockets coaching search. Former Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka is expected to be a serious candidate to replace Nurse, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

“There’s going to be a lot of conversations internally,” said Ujiri, when asked about the pending search for a new coach. “We haven’t gone through that exercise yet.”

He cited “character, quality of a person, style of play, and discipline” as traits the team will look for in a new hire.

With files from The Canadian Press