“We’ve got to be innovative. We’ve got to think about what’s coming next.”
― Nick Nurse
“I always say we’re chasing perfection in an imperfect game.”
― Nick Nurse
“I tried to convince those guys at the Bullets in the ’95-’96 season that they could try to beat the mighty London Towers, who won everything the year before. I got out of bed every day with the mindset of getting the team to Wembley for the play-off final and to win the championship.”
― Nick Nurse
“You look at any roster and you say, ‘Geez, he’s pretty good. He’s pretty good. He’s talented. He comes off the bench?’ All of a sudden, it’s, ‘Geez, that’s a pretty good roster they got right there.’”
― Nick Nurse
“We’ve gotta be trying to think of what’s coming next before it comes next.”
― Nick Nurse
“It’s really an organizational job with a football team to watch them go through their day.”
― Nick Nurse
“I worked at chemistry and developing a style of play on both sides of the ball and studied success and winning.”
― Nick Nurse
“I just want us to be playing our best basketball here when the playoffs start, and in the right mindset.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think the game in general is changing so fast right before our eyes.”
― Nick Nurse
“If you ask what my philosophy is, my philosophy is kind of like an entrepreneurial philosophy.”
― Nick Nurse
“An entrepreneur will do whatever they have to do to make sure things get done. Our coaches will be that way; our players will be that way. Just do what it takes.”
― Nick Nurse
“Esthetically, let’s move the ball. Let’s guard people. Let’s fight.”
― Nick Nurse
“Football is a pretty complex numbering system most of the time: run the three back through the four hole, things like that. We kind of do the same thing – the three man sets for the four, or whatever.”
― Nick Nurse
“We are trying to get away from those traditional centre, power forward type things.”
― Nick Nurse
“It used to be every single time you got the rebound, you handed it to the point guard, or you outlet it to the point guard, or everyone cleared, and you waited until the point guard brought the ball up the floor.”
― Nick Nurse
“I’m gonna back my players.”
― Nick Nurse
“I don’t mind physicality in the least – I don’t mind it in the least, both ends of the floor.”
― Nick Nurse
“As an assistant, you are grinding it out and churning out work like there are not enough hours in the day, really. As a head coach, you are doing similar.”
― Nick Nurse
“I used to say, as an assistant, I would go in and close my door for three hours after practice and just watch film. Now it seems like I’m in a meeting and then another and then another for three hours that have nothing to do with basketball. It’s just different.”
― Nick Nurse
“Sometimes I’m in that timeout, and I say, ‘Let’s go a possession of zone,’ and they’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’ and that shows that they’re confident enough to roll with whatever we’re doing. And sometimes they’re like, ‘No, no, no, no.’ They don’t want a possession to get away from them, possibly.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think there’s some certain attitudes and certain guys that can feed some positive energy, and that keeps you going through an 82-game schedule.”
― Nick Nurse
“It’s such a long season, right? It’s certainly serious business, but it’s no sense that we all have to be miserable doing it.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think a lot of personnel decisions come down to who’s the best player today, like if we had to throw ’em in a game today versus what could their upside be 18 months from now. A lot of times, those are two different answers. That’s the difficulty of player personnel.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think there’s always enough right in front of me worrying about who’s playing the minutes tomorrow, but you’ve always got to have an eye on a year or two from now and what those guys will do if you think, ‘Well, let’s give them a full year at the 905 and see how they progress.’”
― Nick Nurse
“I’m getting older and mellower in my old age.”
― Nick Nurse
“I understand there are bumps in the road. I understand there’s a lot of noise that I don’t want to listen to, and I just try to do my job to the best of my ability.”
― Nick Nurse
“You’re really in a bubble if you’re not watching the league.”
― Nick Nurse
“I’m a guy that, when there’s something rolling out there, the predetermined rotations might go right in the garbage can.”
― Nick Nurse
“It shouldn’t be two separate styles between the first and second unit as much.”
― Nick Nurse
“People talk about offensive chemistry all the time, but defensive chemistry is something you have to build, too, and there’s a lot of that work to be done with just communications and the feel of who certain guys play.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think switching is like a lot of things. You can do it – it’s a game plan – but you better do it well. You better practise it.”
― Nick Nurse
“I want to see given extra effort, pulling for your teammates: those are the kinds of things we’re shooting for and we’re going for because that’s what we need.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think it’s all machismo – ‘Come on, you’ve got to guard your guy, man. If you can’t guard your guy, then you can’t play defence.’ A lot of it is accountability, where you say, ‘Hey, you’re matched up with him. Go do your job.’ The zone kind of sometimes moves a lot of pieces around.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think we’re always chasing a win once the ball goes up.”
― Nick Nurse
“Chemistry kind of builds all season. It’s not like we say, ‘OK, it’s game one, and now we’ve got our chemistry.’ I think it shifts and moves all season long.”
― Nick Nurse
“Obviously, things evolve; teams see you play a little bit and start try to do things, and the one thing that’ll happen is if one team has success in something, you can bet the next three teams are doing some similar things, too.”
― Nick Nurse
“I just think there are so many more good, talented players.”
― Nick Nurse
“I was getting a degree in accounting, and I was going to go off and account. And as it worked out, I haven’t accounted for anything since.”
― Nick Nurse
“Why are people afraid to try something different? Because of the scrutiny they’re going to receive if it doesn’t work. That stops people from trying things different a lot.”
― Nick Nurse
“The game’s evolving quickly, man, and somebody’s gotta be trying some new stuff.”
― Nick Nurse
“At some point in your life, you try to self-reflect and ask yourself, ‘Why do I want to win so bad?’”
― Nick Nurse
“I loved every job I had.”
― Nick Nurse
“People asked me, ‘Why aren’t you doing something more important?’ When I was doing well in the D-League, they were like, ‘Why can’t you get an NBA job? Or a college job?’ I don’t think people thought much of what I was doing. That’s fine. I was learning. Not just X’s and O’s, but team dynamics.”
― Nick Nurse
“Don’t let people take you ahead of where you are at.”
― Nick Nurse
“My job is to coach the team and get them to try to play the best they can come April, May, and June.”
― Nick Nurse
“I believe in getting the ball up the floor and trying to take advantage of transition opportunities.”
― Nick Nurse
“We want to always play with pace on offence.”
― Nick Nurse
“I’ve known Adrian Griffin for quite awhile now and always had him as my ‘when I get a job, I want to hire him if he isn’t already a head coach and I can get him’ list.”
― Nick Nurse
“Phil Handy played for me in England and has obviously risen to stardom in his area of what he does.”
― Nick Nurse
“One of my favorite things about the D-League was going on the road and losing and not having to talk to anyone after the game.”
― Nick Nurse
“Fifty-nine or 54 or 52 or 49 wins isn’t going to mean a whole lot. What’s going to mean a whole lot to me, our organization, and our fans is how we perform in the playoffs and how deep a run we can make, and that’s what we’re setting our sights on.”
― Nick Nurse
“In the regular season, they all only count for one win or one loss. But for a team or coaching staff, these are tests, and you want to see where you’re at.”
― Nick Nurse
“I’ve always been like that: after a loss, I go home and pass out and don’t give it another thought. When I’m winning, I’m too excited.”
― Nick Nurse
“I like to have an attacking style on both ends.”
― Nick Nurse
“I place a lot of value on pace of the game, going after people… always be the aggressor and forcing the issue a little bit when we have the ball, and when we don’t have it, we want to come at you, too.”
― Nick Nurse
“For every philosophical idea about how we’re going to do things, there has to be a plan to get there, and we have to be able to execute it, first in practice and then in games.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think if you’re going to be a little bit innovative or risk-taking, sometimes you’re going to be wrong, and it’s going to look bad. I understand that.”
― Nick Nurse
“That’s your worry as a head coach: Are you going to go in there, give them everything you’ve got, and are they going to respond?”
― Nick Nurse
“I know, when I’m walking out on the court before for the game, it’s like, man, if you wanna compete, here it is. It’s coming. That’s something I really enjoy.”
― Nick Nurse
“It’s pretty draining, the amount of games I watch on a daily basis. It’s pretty much non-stop.”
― Nick Nurse
“I just want to keep getting better. People used to ask me – when I was winning in the D-League – why I wasn’t in the NBA, and I’d tell them, ‘I just want to learn and get better.’ I figured it’d happen one day, and if it didn’t, I really enjoyed my time coaching anyways.”
― Nick Nurse
“That’s playoff basketball. Can you not get too happy after a win? Can you understand how determined the team is going to be after a loss and bring the energy you need to bring?”
― Nick Nurse
“Your big has to be able to make ’em pay from the perimeter.”
― Nick Nurse
“I’ve had a lot of really good preparation. I’ve coached a lot of games around the world.”
― Nick Nurse
“I’ve got way more attention than I ever needed or wanted.”
― Nick Nurse
“It’s not like I’m shy or anything. I’m not.”
― Nick Nurse
“In a game, I’m locked in. I maybe notice three rows in the stands the arena over, and that’s it.”
― Nick Nurse
“It’s about what the players are doing. My job is facilitate that. My job is to put them in positions to succeed. My job is to listen to their ideas, take them if they’re good, quietly push them to the side if they’re not. My job is to help them grow.”
― Nick Nurse
“Long time ago, we used to sit around eating popcorn and drawing up plays.”
― Nick Nurse
“I call Kawhi the best team player in the league. He really does everything: he defends. He scores. He has been grabbing huge rebounds. He is a leader. His competitive spirit to win rubs off on everybody.”
― Nick Nurse
“Iowa is always home for me.”
― Nick Nurse
“The Energy job was probably the key. It kind of transitioned me back into the States. It gave me a link to the NBA. And I got to make some contacts and meet some players and get players set up and learn the NBA game and terminology and coaching those type of players. It was certainly a huge, huge key to getting to the NBA.”
― Nick Nurse
“I’ve coached a lot of teams and moved up gradually and tried to succeed and tried to have success at every level. When that happens, you just continue to wonder if you can keep doing it one more level.”
― Nick Nurse
“When I started coaching, I wanted to find out quickly if I could do it.”
― Nick Nurse
“I started at Grand View and all the England stuff. I just wanted to learn and get better, and that’s kind of what the experiences were.”
― Nick Nurse
“I didn’t think reaching the NBA was a possibility when I coached Derby in 1990. I was right out of college when I went there and was more concerned about playing a bit and getting that out of my system.”
― Nick Nurse
“The gym in Milton Keynes or wooden backboards at Chester – maybe it didn’t feel that glamorous at the time, but it was fun.”
― Nick Nurse
“I know the ‘big spending club v. smaller club’ theme is popular in the Premier League. I don’t think about it – we are 30 teams trying to win the championship, and you do what you need to do.”
― Nick Nurse
“I would want to start. I want to run out there in front of 20,000 people and get my name announced. I get it. I get that.”
― Nick Nurse
“I said it when I got hired. I said, for five years, I had a 1,000 people telling me I was going to be a head coach in the NBA. And when I got the job, those same 1,000 people were shocked.”
― Nick Nurse
“I don’t think when I decided I didn’t want to be an accountant any more that I was necessarily saying I wanted to be an NBA head coach. I just really wanted to figure out if I could do it.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think I jumped the gun a bit on head coaching. I got named a head coach at 23, and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I remember getting that job and going, ‘Oh my God, they gave me the job.’”
― Nick Nurse
“Try to put our guys in different positions, try some different combinations, et cetera, to prepare us for the playoffs, which is what matters.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think it’s really important that we get an experienced staff. Guys that have been a head coach, to me, at some level is important to me. I value head coaching just because it’s good to know what it’s like to be the decision maker.”
― Nick Nurse
“Hindsight is, of course, 20/20. Any time you go back, and you look at something, and now you’ve got the result of something, you say, ‘Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the right idea.’”
― Nick Nurse
“You’ve got to coach with what you have and who’s available.”
― Nick Nurse
“I read a couple books on democratic coaching.”
― Nick Nurse
“Most of the places I came from, you gotta do a lot of gunslinging or coaching by the seat of your pants.”
― Nick Nurse
“Predictability can eventually be defended.”
― Nick Nurse
“I love jazz and blues, where there’s a structure, but a lot of the cool stuff is veering off the page and playing.”
― Nick Nurse
“As an assistant, when you wake up in the morning, you’re opening your laptop and watching film. Then the game starts, and you’re watching it until you finally fall asleep.”
― Nick Nurse
“One of the things I like to do is let the players play and the coaches coach.”
― Nick Nurse
“I think I’m always a little bit under construction. I’m a project that I’m trying to improve upon.”
― Nick Nurse
“I like to play aggressive, in general.”
― Nick Nurse
“They do not eat Yorkshire pudding on Sunday in Iowa.”
― Nick Nurse
“I still say, to this day, I could not guard Nigel Lloyd.”
― Nick Nurse
“I was in love with the triangle because it was so different to what everybody was doing in the NBA. Everybody else was dribbling down, throwing it into the low post, and then their guy would go to work. To me, it was boring.”
― Nick Nurse
“When I came back to England after my stint with Derby in 1995, I really wanted more time to study coaching.”
― Nick Nurse
“My goal early in becoming a head coach so young was to find out if I could do it. I just wanted to see if I could be a good head coach and then start learning from head coaching.”
― Nick Nurse
“Sometimes, I don’t enjoy the wins, and I don’t enjoy the losses, but I’m here just to get the result and get moving.”
― Nick Nurse
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