Nick Nurse knows all about potential. More importantly, he knows how to unlock it.
He did so with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, leading them as head coach to the NBA Championship by creating a team that exceeded the sum of its parts in earning the franchise’s first rings and the city its first banner. Canada’s team rose to become more than just America’s add-on.
To get to that position, Nurse had to unlock his own potential first. That process began in middle England almost 30 years earlier.
In 1990, as a point guard out of Northern Iowa, he knew he wasn’t going to make it to the NBA. But he knew he had a shot, certainly a drive, to be a coach. So, aged 22, he took the punt to become a player-coach at the Derby Rams. And through the travails of a year dealing with the drop-off from Division One college basketball – and the perks that came with it – to small halls and a minibus driven by their starting centre, he came to one sure conclusion. What ambitions he had in basketball would be realised in England.
After going back to the United States, he returned to coach the Birmingham Bullets in 1995 and stayed for another 10 years. A stint with Brighton Bears was sandwiched between further returns home before a tenure as Great Britain’s assistant coach from 2009 up to the end of the 2012 Olympics. He moved onto the Raptors staff in 2013.