Report: Raptors to name Nick Nurse team's new head coach
The last head coaching vacancy in the NBA has finally been filled.
The Toronto Raptors have reached an agreement with assistant coach Nick Nurse to become the team's next head coach, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.
After his four-year collegiate career at Northern Iowa concluded in 1989, Nurse stayed on with the team as an assistant coach. Eventually, he would go on to spend over a decade coaching overseas, particularly in Britain, before returning stateside in the mid-2000s. Nurse was named the D-League Coach of the Year in 2011 for shepherding the Iowa Energy to a league-best 37-13 record and a championship.
The 50-year-old Iowa native spent the past five seasons on former Raptors coach Dwane Casey's staff, each resulting in a playoff appearance for Canada's lone franchise.
Last season, the Raptors boasted a franchise-best 59 wins and ranked third in the league (behind just the Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors) with a net rating of 7.6 points per 100 possessions.
Nurse will inherit a Raptors team that has averaged 52.6 wins in the regular season since the start of the 2013-14 season but has often sputtered in the playoffs. In making the decision to part with the winningest coach in franchise history and turn the team over to Nurse, Raptors president Masai Ujiri has opted to take a chance to see whether a change in leadership can finally push the Raptors toward the promised land of the franchise's first NBA title.
Casey was hired by the Detroit Pistons on Monday.