Raptors fire head coach Nurse

Nick Nurse will be strumming his guitar elsewhere next season.

The Toronto Raptors announced that the man who led the team to the 2019 NBA championship will not be returning as head coach next season.

ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reports former Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka is expected to be a "serious candidate" for the now-vacant head coaching job in Toronto.

Nurse, 55, finishes his five-year tenure with the Raptors with an overall record of 227-163 with two Atlantic Division titles and three playoff appearances.

“The decision to make a change like this is never arrived at easily or taken lightly, especially when it comes to a person who has been an integral part of this franchise’s most historic accomplishments, and who has been a steady leader through some of our team’s most challenging times. As we reflect on Nick’s many successes, we thank him and his family, and wish them the best in future,” Vice-Chairman and President Masai Ujiri said in a press release.

“This is an opportunity for us to reset, to refocus, to put into place the personnel and the players who will help us reach our goal of winning our next championship.”

The Raptors missed the playoffs in 2023, falling 109-105 to the Chicago Bulls in the 9-10 Eastern Conference Play-In game.

A native of Carroll, IA, Nurse joined the Raptors in 2013 as an assistant under Dwane Casey after coaching stints in the NCAA, British Basketball League and the D-League where he won a championships with the Iowa Energy and Rio Valley Vipers and was named D-League Coach of the Year in 2011.

At the conclusion of the 2018 season in which the Raptors were eliminated for a third consecutive year by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, the club decided to make drastic changes by firing Casey, then the NBA Coach of the Year, promoting Nurse and trading franchise icon DeMar DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs for oft-injured and mercurial superstar Kawhi Leonard.

Under Nurse, the Raptors thrived with Leonard, who had only played nine games the previous season recovering from a lingering quad injury, under a “load management” plan in which he was regularly rested and frequently did not play in back-to-back games, as well as added big man Marc Gasol in a deal with the Memphis Grizzlies.

After defeating the Orlando Magic in the first round and then defeating the Philadelphia 76ers in seven games on Leonard’s now-famous series-winning shot, the Raptors overturned a 2-0 deficit to defeat the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference Finals and reach the franchise’s first NBA Finals. The Raptors would go on to defeat the Golden State Warriors in six games to capture their first championship.

Returning with much of the same roster the following season, minus Leonard, who departed for the Los Angeles Clippers in free agency, the Raptors retained their division title and earned the franchise’s first-ever postseason series sweep over the Brooklyn Nets in the first round before falling to the Boston Celtics in seven games in the second round of the playoffs at the Disney World NBA Bubble.

Forced to relocate to Tampa for the 2020-21 season due to pandemic-related border regulations, the team won 27 games in the COVID-19-shortened 72-game campaign, the fewest in nearly a decade and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2013. Team talisman Kyle Lowry would be traded in the offseason to the Miami Heat, largely turning the page on the championship team.

Buoyed by the play of fourth overall pick Scottie Barnes, the eventual NBA Rookie of the Year, the emergence of Pascal Siakam as an effective No. 1 option and an All-Star season from Fred VanVleet, the Raptors returned to the playoffs with a 48-win season in 2021-22. The team would be bounced in six games of the first round by the Sixers.

As the Raptors looked to secure a place in at least the Play-In Tournament, the Toronto Star’s Doug Smith reported in late March that Nurse was expected to depart the team at season’s end for the Houston Rockets, the NBA parent club of Rio Grande, with former Celtics coach Ime Udoka slated to take the helm of the Raptors. The rumours continued to swirl days later when the topic of Nurse’s future was broached at a postgame press conference.

“First of all, I think when this season gets done, we’ll evaluate everything, and even personally, I’m going to take a few weeks to see where I’m at, you know?” Nurse said on Apr. 1. “Like you said, where my head’s at. And just see how the relationship with the organization is and everything.”

At Nurse’s season-ending availability, he reiterated his love for the organization and city, but made no guarantees about his future.

“Listen, I love it here…and we have built a really strong culture,” Nurse said. “That is what [team president Masai Ujiri] is doing. That I what [general manager] Bobby [Webster] is doing. That’s what I’m doing. We got to all evaluate how we can get that culture back where we need it and get back to being a playoff team and then getting to a level of winning it all. That’s what we want to do. That’s what we get up and go to work for, for the last 10 years.”