Nick Nurse and Toronto Raptors are fresh off winning 48 games while leaning on accolade-worthy performances from Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes. In a year where Toronto expected to cross that 50-win threshold, Toronto has fallen flat on its face.
The Raptors currently stand at 16-23, giving them the sixth-best odds at landing the No. 1 overall pick and Victor Wembanyama. While this may help the Raptors land a future franchise cornerstone, all of the optimism that they came into the season with has been sucked out of the building.
While injuries have certainly impacted Nurse’s ability to get his best lineups on the floor consistently, and the roster construction that Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster decided on is very clearly handicapping them, Nurse hasn’t overcome those obstacles. He needs to be taken to task in the same way some of his players are.
The Raptors are likely nowhere close to thinking about a Nurse firing, nor should they make such a decision this early into the season. However, if they want to turn up the heat and sow that results like the last few weeks are unacceptable, they have plenty of ammo to use against Nurse.
Toronto Raptors: 3 reasons Nick Nurse may be on the hot seat.
3. Shooting regression
Nurse has literally written a book on the art of shooting. After turning many poor shooters into respectable snipers from deep, Nurse has presided over a team that is currently dead last in the NBA in 3-point percentage. How has it gone so wrong so quickly?
Malachi Flynn is making 41% of his 3-pointers, but he’s barely hanging on to a rotation spot, but no other rotation regular is making more than 37% of their triples. If Fred VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr. don’t have fantastic nights from deep, the Raptors struggle to look like an NBA offense.
Nick Nurse isn’t making the Toronto Raptors shoot well.
Nurse’s offensive scheme affords tons of freedom for players who want to be creative, but it also puts a ton of pressure on their performances. The fact that Nurse hasn’t appeared to have made a ton of significant tweaks has to be very concerning for fans.
The Raptors have the worst half-court offense in the entire league despite Trent and the awesome Pascal Siakam being in the middle of the best individual seasons of their careers. Nurse’s style is clearly not working, and his constant tinkering with the lineup shows how desperate he is.