Toronto Raptors Take Weeks Just To Decide To Promote Nick Nurse To Head Coach

Honestly? I’m not quite sure what took so long. The moment the Raptors fired Dwane Casey there were really only two options for them to hire that made sense. One was promoting Nick Nurse to head coach. The other was moving Jerry Stackhouse from the Raptors G League affiliate to head coach of Toronto. That’s it.

Stackhouse just joined the staff in Memphis yesterday so it was announced today that the Raptors are promoting Nick Nurse. He’s spent the last five years as an assistant for Casey and before that spent six seasons as a head coach in the G League. He was the G League Coach of the Year in 2011 with the Iowa Energy and won two titles – one with the Energy and one with the Rio Grande Vipers.

Nurse is known as an offensive-minded coach, with a large appreciation for what he did in helping Lowry and DeRozan grow into All-Stars. He’ll have pretty much the same team as he worked with last week – with the big questions being 1) do they resign Fred VanVleet and 2) do they trade either Lowry or DeRozan? Either way, this hrie is the one that made sense, I’m just not entirely sure what took so long.