That time Nick Nurse reached out to Phil Jackson.
How Phil Jackson is influencing today's NBA coaches – ABC7 Chicago
There is no secret code word. No special name for the growing group of coaches who have reached out and sought mentoring or advice from Jackson. There’s not even an obvious connection between them.
Rivers knew Jackson from coaching against him and through Tyronn Lue, who’d played for Jackson. Philadelphia 76ers coach Brett Brown was introduced via Luc Longley and Coby Karl, both of whom played for Jackson. Chicago Bulls coach Jim Boylen asked his owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, and Jackson’s former player, John Paxson, for an introduction. Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse asked Alex McKechnie, his vice president of player health and performance, who’d worked with Jackson in Los Angeles. Lakers coach Frank Vogel got to know him through former Jackson assistant Brian Shaw. Dallas Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle just knows everyone, as president of the NBA Coaches Association.
Nurse wasn’t sure what to expect when he reached out to Jackson in the summer of 2018, a few weeks after he was named coach of the Raptors.
He’d studied Jackson for years. As a young coach at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, in the early 1990s, Nurse would often drive to Chicago, buy a standing room-only ticket to watch Jackson’s Bulls, then drive the five hours back to Des Moines after the game. When he coached in England in the late 1990s, Nurse would order Bulls videotapes and study Jackson’s offense — Nurse’s teams ran the triangle then — his rotations, his adjustments, even his sideline demeanor.
So when McKechnie offered to arrange a meeting with Jackson, Nurse couldn’t resist.
He’d already met with former Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon, Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay and Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney to get advice before embarking on his first NBA head-coaching job. But meeting Jackson would be different. The Zen Master invited him to his house in Montana — for three days.
“I didn’t know if I was going to go out there for a cup of coffee with him and that’s it,” Nurse said. “But I figured if that happened, I’d just take a few days [in Montana] to myself, to relax.”
That cup of coffee turned into a three-day coaching retreat. They drove around in Jackson’s truck, watched film together and broke down plays on a whiteboard.
Nurse couldn’t believe what was happening. He was nerding out with the coach he’d studied and admired for years.
“It was fun, because he was testing my knowledge of basketball a bit, too” Nurse said. “He’d be telling a story and say, ‘That red-headed kid’ and stop and see if I could fill in the blanks.
“Fortunately I’m enough of a historian — or a geek — to know. So I’d say, ‘Yeah, that was Matt Bonner’ or whatever. And I could tell he liked that.”
Boylen said he even studied before he went out to see Jackson in Montana.
“I think he researches people before they come. Because he knew some stuff about me — like, ‘I know you coach guys hard. … You’re a defensive-minded guy,'” Boylen said. “So I was prepared, too. I had notes, copies of rosters, personnel, coaches he’d hired. I read his books.”
Like Nurse, Boylen had no idea how much time Jackson would spend with him. They had plans for lunch at a local cafe and that’s it.
“I think the place closed at 3, and we left at 5,” he said. “Then we had dinner at this place that closed at 9, and we stayed until 10.”
The next morning he stopped by the bakery and had them make a quiche he could bring over to Jackson’s house for lunch.
“It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” Boylen said.
Raptors’ Embry had front-row seat to MJ's greatness long before 'Last Dance' – Sportsnet.ca
And given the lack of options for sports entertainment during five weeks the behind-the-scenes documentary of the last of the Bulls six championships plays out, it likely won’t change.
An exception to the rule was Wayne Embry, the Toronto Raptors executive who is self-isolating with his wife Terri and their two daughters in Dayton, Ohio.
“I did not watch,” said Embry earlier this week. “I’m staying with my daughters and the family was watching something else, so I wanted to be a family man and watch what they were watching. I’ll have to catch up on it.”
“I used to stay in the tunnel for our home games, and when Ehlo went in for the lay-up to put us up … everyone was all cheering,” says Embry. “I was stoically watching what was happening on the court and people were like ‘Wayne aren’t you excited? We’re going to win, we’re going to win!’
“I said ‘calm down, he’s going to get one more shot’ and sure enough, the damn thing rattled and went in.
“My heart dropped.”
Embry’s Cavs would end up losing seven playoff series to Jordan’s Bulls, including the Eastern Conference Finals in 1992.
It was a swath of dominance that played out over a decade and a complete roster makeover.
Embry won the NBA executive-of-the-year award in 1992 in putting together what was probably his best team in Cleveland and again in 1998 for a revamped roster built around a promising Zydrunas Ilgauskas.
The Bulls just won titles.
“I thought we a better team, one-through-12, a couple of those times, but they had greatness on their side,” says Embry. “… We had to overcome Michael and we couldn’t get it done.”
Embry is an expert on the subject of greatness and overcoming.
As a player, he teamed with Oscar Robertson on the Cincinnati Royals and was a five-time all-star, but never tasted champagne because Cincinnati couldn’t find a way past Bill Russell and the Celtics or Wilt Chamberlain and the 76ers.
Toronto Raptors All-Decade Team – Last Word on Pro Basketball
Starters
Jonas Valanciunas – Center (2012-19)
Jonas Valanciunas contributed the most to the Raptors roster. He played many years with the Toronto Raptors before being traded to the Memphis Grizzlies last year. Dwane Casey, who was the head coach for Valanciunas for many years, described him like this on Memphis Flyer by Sharon Brown.“Every year he got better and better at understanding that those mundane things are just as important as hollow points you might put up, the verticality, the screening, the rolling, the catching and making good decisions. It’s not flashy, your name doesn’t get in the paper, but those teams win when those guys accept those roles and do that job. It’s not fun, but it’s a very valuable position to develop and to be in.”
Valanciunas has been a Raptors player for most of the previous decade. He played for the Raptors from 2012-19. In his 2012-13 rookie season, He averaged 8.9 points and six rebounds per game. He also averaged 12.7 points and 8.6 rebounds per game in the 2017-18 season. Valanciunas also had similar stats in the 2018-19 season scoring 12.8 points per game and 7.2 rebounds per game. He also stepped up in the 2018 NBA playoffs as he had 21 points and 21 rebounds against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
A Rematch Between the Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors Will End Differently
The goal for the rest of the season is to win that seventh seed. That would likely set up another playoff matchup with the Toronto Raptors.
And this time, the series would play out far differently than last year’s gentlemen’s sweep in five games. There is no guarantee this happens — the Toronto Raptors lead the Boston Celtics by three games for second — but it still seems like the most likely playoff matchup for the two teams.
Both teams might have ended up in the same place as last year — in the 2-7 match in the Playoffs — but there are key differences for both teams from last year. It will be an entirely different series.
For the Raptors, the biggest difference is the absence of Kawhi Leonard. That is the difference between defending their championship and being just a power in the Eastern Conference.
That has not stopped the Raptors from being one of the very best teams in the Eastern Conference and the entire league.
Toronto is 46-18 behind one of the best defenses in the league. The Raptors are fourth in the league with a +6.4 net rating, posting the second-best defense at 104.9 points allowed per 100 possessions.
Like last season, the Raptors have used that defense to feed one of the best transition attacks in the league. Toronto averages 19.4 fast-break points per game, the most in the league.
The team rolled over its identity and has found new players to step in time and time again. Through injuries to several key players throughout the year, the Raptors keep banding together. They have done so lining up behind All-Star Pascal Siakam and veteran stalwart Kyle Lowry.
But this team is different. They are smaller, relying more on Fred VanVleet in the backcourt with Kyle Lowry. The team is a year older too. And that is seen most in Marc Gasol.
Marc Gasol stymied Nikola Vucevic throughout last year’s playoff series. But Marc Gasol has now been sent to the bench for Serge Ibaka. Ibaka is not that young either.
He has been rejuvenated playing at center, however. Ibaka is averaging 16.0 points per game and 8.3 rebounds per game, although he is averaging less than 1.0 block per game for the first time in his career.
Nikola Vucevic played only one full game against the Magic — injuring his ankle in the second game and missing the third game — and struggled shooting just 1 for 13 to score five points. But that was back when Gasol was still the starting center.
"All around Canada we are one family, one team" ♥️♥️ @sergeibaka #StrongerTogether #TousEnsemble @StrongerCanada @Raptors pic.twitter.com/rUrfL1PaBN
— CTV (@CTV) April 26, 2020
