TORONTO — If everyone knew what to say, you figure they would have said it by now.
There are plenty of questions the Toronto Raptors need to answer for themselves — and for their fans — as the 2022-23 season slides into memory and the possibly transformative work of the off-season begins in earnest.
But the first question looming is what is going to happen with head coach Nick Nurse. The only person who can answer that is team president Masai Ujiri, and so far he’s kept his own counsel.
Ujiri typically sits for an end-of-season review some period of time after the last game, once the players and head coach have said their piece, which happened last Thursday, the morning after Toronto’s season ended with a play-in game loss to the Chicago Bulls. But it was seven days before the Raptors announced that Ujiri would be speaking with the media on Friday at 11 a.m. ET.
If he’s taking a little longer than usual, most likely it’s because he’s figuring out what to say.
Right now they’re at the fact-finding stage. The Raptors brain trust and Nurse have spent this week meeting daily, doing a deep dive into their season and trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.
At the very least that suggests that the likelihood of some sudden fracture between the two sides is lessening by the day. If the differences were irreconcilable, we’d probably know about it by now.
Ujiri usually gives things a few days — somewhere between two to five — to let the dust settle before making his views known. The exception was in 2018-19, when the Raptors were coming off their championship and Ujiri waited 12 days, in part because the season went so long that they had to immediately began preparing for the draft and free agency.
In this case it’s safe to assume Ujiri is using the extra time afforded by the Raptors’ earliest season end in more than a decade to make sure that whatever message he delivers is on point and charts a direction that leads somewhere positive.
Quite often, Ujiri’s state-of-the-Raptors pressers feel like important moments for the franchise. Even in the wake of their title, Ujiri had to address reports that he was being poached by other organizations and acknowledge the possibility of star player Kawhi Leonard leaving.
In 2017, the theme was ‘culture reset’ after the Raptors were swept in the second round. Back then some consideration was given to changing coaches. Instead the energy went into reinvigorating and modernizing the Raptors’ offensive priorities and the result was a team-record 59-win season.
But in 2018, after losing to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs for the third straight year and being swept for the second straight time, Ujiri did make a coaching change, firing Dwane Casey and eventually hiring Nurse.
Interestingly, Ujiri met with the media on May 9 in 2018 — just two days after getting blown out in Game 4 in Cleveland — but had to reconvene on May 11 when he made the decision to fire Casey, who was coach-of-the-year that season, a move an emotional Ujiri called the most difficult of his career.
Even when big decisions are being contemplated, Ujiri can move briskly.
So what’s taking so long this time around?
Well, reading between the lines, it’s likely that for all the buzz around the Raptors’ coaching situation as the regular season drew to close — a good portion of it fanned by Nurse himself — the Raptors don’t want to fire anyone.
If they did, it would have happened already. And we’re not talking already this past week, but already this season.
From Nov. 30 to Feb. 1, the Raptors went 12-21 and had the league’s 23rd-ranked defence. It was a miserable time.
Teams have fired coaches for less and if Nurse was given truth serum, who is to say he wouldn’t have welcomed getting his walking papers with a year left on his deal, free to line up the next good job that came open? The Raptors could have fired him late in the season, too, after Nurse’s unnecessary public musings about “10 years being a long run” and his need to reflect on his “relationship with the organization” as the Raptors were about to play some of the most crucial games in their season.
But it never came to that. Acting rashly in the heat of the moment is not something Ujiri does. And, as we’ve seen, if Ujiri was determined to make a coaching change, he wouldn’t need to drag it out. He didn’t with Casey and if anything that situation was less clear-cut — the Raptors were coming off the best season in their history at the time.
Again, if firing Nurse was the plan, it likely would have happened already.
And not surprisingly — given he has another year and $8 million or so left on his contract — Nurse isn’t about to quit: It was telling that after the season when he addressed the local media about his job status for the first time he tried to make it sound like the whole tempest his comments had created were a misinterpretation of sorts. “Well, my stance on my relationship with the front office is … Masai really wants to win. I really want to win. We are driving to try to figure out how to get back to a championship level.”
His official position: “I love it here.”
But that doesn’t mean the Raptors will feel obligated to run to Nurse with a hefty extension to show their love. Maybe another year on his current deal as a compromise makes sense, but as I’ve asked around those in a position to know, there’s been nothing forthcoming. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but there’s been nothing yet.
So now what?
From a distance, it appears like a stalemate of sorts: a coach who doesn’t want to walk away without a safe landing spot or stay on without the security of an extension … and an organization that doesn’t want to lose a good coach for no good reason, and certainly without a preferred replacement waiting in the wings.
“I think they’re playing chicken a little bit,” said one executive with a finger on the pulse of the league’s coaching market.
Which side is going to blink? As time ticks on, it’s quite possible — and maybe inevitable — that neither side does, and that some compromises are reached, or accommodations made, or everyone just pretends the whole thing never happened.
The sense is that the likelihood of the Houston Rockets ending up as Nurse’s next job is slipping as time ticks on. “He may have lost a little leverage there,” said one source.
Meanwhile, Ime Udoka, the former Celtics head coach who is being linked to the job in Houston, and will likely be at or near the top of the list when any of the teams currently in the playoffs end up looking to make a change, isn’t necessarily a lock for the Raptors, even if he does have ties with Ujiri.
As long as any coaching candidate has choices, why wouldn’t they wait until he sees which way the lottery balls bounce on May 16? If the Rockets end up choosing No. 1 and (presumably) drafting French phenom Victor Wembanyama, Houston could represent a ground-floor opportunity. If it’s Detroit, maybe the Pistons are the best spot, and on down the list.
Meanwhile, while several executives I spoke with maintain that between the organization, ownership, city, and the chance to earn U.S. dollars while spending in Canadian, Toronto remains an attractive opportunity for any coach. The way the roster is currently — a middling team with several key free agents and a shortage of shooting and depth — would again mean a coaching candidate with options would think twice.
How it all shakes out is still to be determined and chances are we won’t hear from Ujiri until he knows what the answer to the first question he’ll face — “who is your coach?” — is going to be.
But at this stage it’s seeming more and more like the answer will be: “Nick Nurse.”
We should find out soon enough, possibly as early as Friday.
