Toronto Raptors: Pascal Siakam confirms Nick Nurse beef is over

The Toronto Raptors looked like a very disjointed team last season, as playing an entire stretch of home games away from Scotiabank Arena might make it more difficult to get any sort of momentum going. Even Pascal Siakam and Nick Nurse, an All-NBA player and Coach of the Year who both have championship rings, got into some dust-ups.

Siakam was fined $50,000 dollars at one point near the tail end of the season, as he and Nurse got into a verbal disagreement that sources like Sportsnet claim got personal. This comes after he was benched for a win against the Knicks earlier in the year for another disciplinary matter.

From the outside looking in, it could be easy to infer that there is some bad blood between Siakam and Nurse. However, in an appearance on Bob McCown’s podcast, Siakam confirmed that any strife he may have had with Nurse was minor and that those incidents are water under the bridge.

Siakam, who battled trade rumors this offseason, is chalking any issues he and Nurse may have had to some good, old-fashioned irritation after losing a bunch of games last year. He sounds ready to rock and get back to the postseason in 2021.

“It’s frustrating, losing” Siakam said. “You go out there and sometimes you get frustrated. I think it was nothing more than that, just being frustrated about not being able to accomplish what we feel like we’re capable of doing and it was just a disagreement, and we kind of moved past that a long time ago.”

Pascal Siakam has no bad blood with Raptors head coach Nick Nurse.

Siakam has been a key contributor on a champion and an All-NBA performer on a team that won 53 games and earned the No. 2 seed in the East. It’s frustrating to be a whole country away from home amid constant injury problems and losing, and Nurse seems to have assigned any Siakam outbursts to passion rather than vitriol.

While Siakam will miss the first handful of games this season due to his recovery from shoulder surgery, Nurse will need him to get back to his old self quickly, as Toronto’s offensive ceiling is dependant on his scoring.

Getting together and fostering a culture that promotes winning and squashes any sort of locker room discord is a must. While it sounded like Siakam and Nurse were two warring factions in the season, they have made up and have united in the pursuit of defying the experts and getting some wins on the board.