Nick Nurse has been fired as head coach of the Toronto Raptors after a “disappointing” season, the team’s president said on Friday.
Masai Ujiri announced the decision during his end-of-season press conference this morning.
“We decided to part ways with Coach Nick Nurse. We want to wish Nick Nurse and his family the best of luck. And thank him for everything he’s done in this organization, including helping us win an incredible championship, an incredible 10 years,” he emotionally said.
Nurse, 55, led the team to its first NBA championship win in 2019 and was voted the 2020 NBA Coach of the Year.
Ujiri said he did not enjoy watching the team play this season, after it finished ninth in the East with a 41-41 record and losing to the Chicago Bulls in the NBA play-in tournament.
“To watch us play this year was not us. I did not enjoy watching this team play. And I think that spoke loud and clear to everything that I think went on this year. It bothered all of us, it bothered coach to. But sometimes we have to make change and we have to move forward,” he said.
He added that the team has been lacking its “spirit” in the last season and he’s hoping to bring that back.
“I feel the spirit of who we really are, it’s been very disappointing for us and we want to gain momentum back as a team. Togetherness, all of the things I think culturally we have stood for here, I think we lacked this year,” he said. “There was never that full excitement. There was never that full spirit. There was never that feel of like togetherness, we all saw it.”
Ujiri said he takes some of the blame for that lack of spirit this past season.
“It’s not one person or one finger to point and there’s no pointing a finger at Nick. I have to take responsible for this too. As a leader of this organization, I will always do that. But it wasn’t us, this year wasn’t us. I think everybody saw that,” he added.
As for who will replace Nurse, Ujiri said he has not discussed that yet.
“To be honest, we haven’t gone through that exercise yet. It’s going to be a lot of conversations internally. Talking to Bobby Webster (Raptors General Manager) and the crew.”
Nurse joined the Raptors in 2013 as an assistant coach under Dwayne Casey before being named the ninth head coach in the team’s history in June 2018.
ESPN Senior NBA Insider Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted on Monday that Nurse will become a
prominent candidate in the Houston Rockets’ coaching search, according to sources.
Meanwhile, former Celtics coach Ime Udoka is expected to be a serious candidate to replace Nurse, sources told ESPN.
As for next season, Ujiri said “changes are going to be made on all fronts.”
“We’re going to address that with the team. We saw how different players on our team will rise or do well but they never did it collectively and maybe that could be fixed. Maybe that could be sometimes system, sometimes role and orientation, and sometimes accountability,” he said.
