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Highlights: Nets vs. Raptors
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In recent years, the NBA has held a big party to announce its major awards, but that is apparently not possible in the time of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, like everything else these days, the honors are handed out. Earlier on Saturday, the league announced that Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse received the first honor 2019-20 NBA Coach of the Year.
Nurse walked away with the award, receiving 90 of the 100 votes in first place for a total of 470 points. Mike Budenholzer (5) of the Milwaukee Bucks, Billy Donovan (4) of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Nate McMillan (1) of the Indiana Pacers were the only other coaches to receive votes in the first place. Budenholzer finished second overall, while Donovan finished third.
After losing to Kawhi Leonard last summer, expectations were understandably lowered for the defending champions, but they grabbed exactly where they left off, going 53-19 in the shortened season. Much of that was thanks to the leadership of veterans like Kyle Lowry and Marc Gasol, as well as the continued rise of Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet. But Nurse also deserves a lot of credit for the way he prepared his team on the defensive end, keeping them on course despite all kinds of injuries. Saturday he got it.
Nurse’s coaching journey has taken him around the world, and he has spent time coaching both in Belgium and England, where he was twice named British Basketball League Coach of the Year, and worked with the British national team. When he returned to the United States, Nurse worked in the G League for a number of years, and in 2011 was named G League Coach of the Year.
He eventually got his shot in the NBA, joining the Raptors as an assistant coach under Dwane Casey. When the Raptors fired Casey in 2018, they promoted Nurse to the position of head coach, and he has been an immediate success. In his first two years in leadership, he led the team to their first title in franchise history and now has an NBA Coach of the Year award to go with the other trophies in his case.
Nurse is the only head coach to win a title in both the G League and NBA, and is now also the only Coach of the Year to win in both the G League and NBA. Following his success with the Raptors, Nurse was also hired as head coach of the Canadian national team.
