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.
2. Stalled development
Part of the reason that Ujiri felt so comfortable leaning into the “Vision 6-9” philosophy is the idea that Toronto’s excellent player development culture would have the club’s best young players performing more effectively in relatively short order. Instead, the team has flatlined.
The prime example of this is Barnes, who teams are focusing on. His numbers are very similar to or slightly below what he accomplished last year in most critical areas. When he has to fill so many holes and vacillate between so many different roles on both ends of the floor, it makes sense as to why his development has been slightly stunted.
The Toronto Raptors are not developing talent.
Outside of Barnes, Precious Achiuwa hasn’t replicated his second-half performances in his limited appearances this year. Both Malachi Flynn and Dalano Banton look like players that aren’t going to end up in the team’s long-term rotation. Christian Koloko is too far away to make a judgment on.
Nurse’s tendencies to either run starters into the dirt or take young fringe players out at the rotation at the first sign of strife may not make for an ideal developmental environment. Has he lost a step in this area over the years?
1. Disappointing record
At the end of the day, this is a results-based business, and Nurse isn’t getting the wins that can make all criticism melt away. The fact that Wembanyama’s name and thoughts of tanking are being muttered within earshot of the province of Ontario is a failure that falls on this coaching staff.
The Raptors had an issue with playing down to their competition last season, and now they have an issue with playing in general. The Raptors were hovering around .500 for the first quarter of the season, but the bottom has completely fallen out from this team. The slow starts, followed by fake comebacks, are getting irritating.
Nick Nurse isn’t leading the Toronto Raptors to wins.
While the Raptors definitely overachieved last year, they’ve regressed in the minds of basically everyone with an IQ somewhere above the single digits. If none of that can trace back to the coach, that is a startling lack of accountability that exists within the organization.
The Raptors are definitely a team that must retool instead of rebuild, as this roster needs a system shock that can get everyone back in the swing of things. As it stands right now, Nurse is running his stars into the ground while being abrasive in press conferences. That’s not a recipe for success.