Toronto’s Nurse Nick’s Nurse won the league’s top coach award on Saturday.
Nurse was named NBA Coach of the Year, and walked away with the award in just his second year as head coach in the league.
Nick Nurse received majority vote in 1st place
Nurse earned 90 votes in the first place among the 100 members of the media who voted, grabbing 470 total points. Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer came in second with five votes in first place. Oklahoma City Thunder coach Billy Donovan came in third.
Both Donovan and Budenholzer won this award for the National Basketball Coaches Association Coach of the Year earlier this month – an award voted on by the league’s 30 coaches. Nurse came in third in that race.
Saturday’s award was, like the rest of the NBA’s superlatives this season, just based on the season before the game was stopped in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic – and did not include anything that has happened so far within the NBA. bubble by Walt Disney World.
The Iowa native led the Raptors to a record of 46-18 when the game ended, the second-best in the Eastern Conference at the time, and helped the no. 2-seed secured in the playoffs of the Eastern Conference in the bubble. The team currently has a 3-0 lead over the Brooklyn Nets in their opening round series.
Nurse – who led the Raptors to their first NBA title last season after serving five years as an assistant staffer – had earned the NBA D-League Coach of the Year award in 2010-11, while serving with the Iowa Energy was. The 53-year-old is now the first coach to ever earn the top prize in both leagues.
He is the third coach to ever win the award in Toronto, and worked alongside Sam Mitchell in 2006-07 and Dwane Casey in 2017-18.
Raptors coach Nick Nurse walked away with the league’s head coach award on Saturday, receiving 90 of a possible 100 votes for first place. (Ashley Landis-Pool / Getty Images)
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