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Since it’s mid-September and basketball bloggers are desperate for any way to kill time, CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn unveiled his ranking of all 30 NBA head coaches on Monday. Based on his rankings, the Sixers made a clear upgrade going from Doc Rivers to Nick Nurse last offseason.
Rivers landed at No. 22 on Quinn’s list, in the “I wouldn’t be enthused” tier alongside JB Bickerstaff (Pistons), Billy Donovan (Bulls) and Chauncey Billups (Trail Blazers). While Rivers did guide the Boston Celtics to the 2008 NBA championship, Quinn noted how routinely he’s fallen short of expectations since then:
Doc Rivers had Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. He had Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. He had Joel Embiid and James Harden. He never reached the conference finals with any of them. It’s been a long time since 2008. His players clearly like playing for him, and he is perhaps the best job interviewer among current coaches. Owners love him. That’s probably how he keeps getting these premium jobs. But he also keeps blowing playoff leads, over-relying on name-brand veterans, punting on offensive rebounds and running predictable offenses. Hiring Doc Rivers looks better in a press release than employing Doc Rivers tends to actually work out on the court.
After parting ways with Rivers last offseason, the Sixers brought in Nurse, who guided the Toronto Raptors to the 2019 NBA championship. (Let’s agree not to discuss the path they took to get there.) The Sixers went only 47-35 in Nurse’s first season and lost in the first round of the playoffs—both of which were worse than their results in any of Rivers’ three seasons—but that didn’t hurt him in Quinn’s rankings.
Nurse’s tactical acumen was his big selling point, both to the Sixers and to Quinn:
What Carlisle is to offense, Nurse is to defense. How many coaches would think to bust out a triangle-and-2 defense to stifle Stephen Curry in the Finals? Nick Nurse. End of list. One of the advantages of coming up as a coach in Belgium and Britain and the G-League is that Nurse was exposed to so many different players and styles that when he did ultimately get the top job, he had a far wider pool of strategies to reference in high-stress situations. He’s seen everything, and by this point, he’s used everything.
Nurse, at his core, is a problem solver. Whatever you show him on the court, he’s going to have some idea about how to stop it, and the results thus far have spoken for themselves. He lost Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green and his Raptors still maintained the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. Joel Embiid played his best basketball under Nurse last season despite winning an MVP under Rivers. He’s lucky Thibodeau exists, because his reputation for overusing starters probably doesn’t go quite far enough, but in matters of strategy, Nurse is almost unmatched. Emphasis on almost.
While the Sixers’ win-loss record and playoff results might suggest they took a step back last season, they entered the year with the James Harden trade drama hanging over them like the Sword of Damocles, and they finished the season with a hobbled Joel Embiid after his midseason meniscus “procedure.” (Don’t you dare call it a surgery.) Before Embiid went down, though, he seemed headed for back-to-back MVP awards, as Nurse unlocked him as a passer in ways his previous coaches never did. Who knew off-ball movement was allowed in the NBA?
The Sixers completely overhauled their roster this offseason, which means Nurse will almost have to start from square one again. Luckily, he’s proven his ability time and again to adapt to new situations and get the most out of his personnel.
Isn’t it nice for coaching to be a strength rather than a weakness heading into a season? What a marked departure from recent years.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Salary Swish and salary-cap information via RealGM.
