You're tuned into Heat Check with Trystal Quick.
On this emergency episode of the Heat Check. We're doing it again because the first take wasn't recording. You're welcome. We convene on this Friday. Not because of the Kings versus the Warriors. That game was trash buckets, but because of the seismic news from North of the Border alert Alert. The Raptors have fired Nick Nurse. They have fired him. He is fired. He is fired. My god, last too unpacked. Let's get into it, folks. Nick dropped that generic gas
beat that should be Rihanna. What a way to wake up in the morning after a late night game. Guys, Oh my god. So I was in San Francisco, super excited game, our dubs came to play, doesn't matter how they dogwalk the Kings, it happened, uh, And I went to the postgame presser, got back super late, made some tiktoks, talked to some friends, and I crashed out. And then at like six thirty in the morning, my time, my phone's blown up. My phone's blown up. Nick Nurse, trista.
Nick Nurse has been fired by the Raptors. Let's get on it. And we speculated about it, right, we did. We thought maybe he would quit though, like we really did. We thought. We talked about it multiple times on the podcast. I thought he would leave and go maybe to a place like, I don't know, Philly or Houston or Washington if they fire Wes Unsel Junior, I don't know. I just thought maybe it would be in his own hands.
And it kind of seems strange because the Raptors, you could say they had a disappointing season at forty one and forty one, but they did still make the play in They squandered a game against the Bulls where they were up big. They could be in the playoffs right now. You could argue that this season really had very little to do with Nick Nurse. Right. You look at last season the Raptors went forty eight and thirty before they
finished fifth in the East. The year before that, of course, it was horrible, but that was post COVID and they were in Tampa Bay. They were twenty seven and forty five, but again, they were not with their families, they were not in a city that was familiar. There were no fans. Every game was a road game. During the COVID season itself, they were fifty three and nineteen, and before the league shut down they were the I think they were the best team in the East. And the year before COVID,
of course, they won the title. So I'm not really sure why he's gone, but he's gone as a Raptor head coach. He finishes three ninety and two, twenty seven and twenty five and sixteen in the playoff. That's really tough. That's a really good winning percentage, sixty three percent winning percentage. How many fucking head coaches are doing that? Who who's doing that? Not many? So what happened, Well, the truth is the roster was weird. We know that I talked
to him at summer league. He gave me this spiel that he loved six seven to six nine guys that were all athletic, positive wingspan, could set screens, could be the roller, could be the screen setter, could be the guy coming off ball passing, and that, by the way, check that out on the fee if you want to
know more about how he sees basketball. But he also said that he wanted a rim protector and that was supposed to be Christian Colloco, right, And Christian Colloco really didn't see the court at all, and they didn't have rim protection pretty much all year until they acquired slow, non nimble Yaka Perl at the deadline. So, okay, I get it, but how much of that roster was really on Nick Nurse? And the hard truth I think that most people in the Raptors front office don't want to
face is that their roster philosophy might not be correct. Right, you want a zig while everybody else is zagging. Sometimes you got a zig back because whatever you're doing isn't working. You've got a roster that overlaps way too much. We know that, right. You got og and and Obi, you got Scottie Barnes, you got Chris Bouchet. All of them are playing a similar style of basketball, and you can't
really play them all at the same time. One guy's making nine million, one guy's making eighteen million, one guy's making twelve million. None of them are elite shooters. None, As a Lebron would say, none of them are exactly lasers. And that's the Achilles heel for this team, because if you look at their three point shooting, you look at their field goal percentage, they were third worse than the NBA of both those things. That's not good. That's yo,
straight up trash bucket. You don't want that, not in this league. They sacrifice shooting because they're like, oh yeah, all of our length, we're gonna be this amazing defense, and we're gonna shut guys down. Doesn't matter if we score, because we're gonna be so good at shutting other teams down. But yeah, you finish tenth in defensive rating. That's not good enough, not when you can't shoot, not when you can't score. And that got them exactly what you would expect,
a five hundred record. So knowing just how bad they shoot, and knowing that they struggled on defense for long stretches of time, it's kind of incredible. Actually they won forty one games. You could actually say Nick Nurse did some of his best coaching this year. And of course there's a disparity between the old players on the roster and the young players the timeline. As they would say, I'm not talking about thirty year olds and twenty year olds.
I'm talking like first and second year players and dudes on like their second contracts, Guys that are in their mid thirties. Take a guy like delanno'banon Nick gave him run in the beginning of the season. He bawled. He was averaging eleven minutes per game for fourteen out of fifteen first games of the year. Ask me why I know that?
Do not?
I was interested in Delano Benton earlier on in the year. He put off twenty seven to four and four, three steals, two blocks in the fourteenth game, and I was like this, de lonal' Benton guy is good. Then happened he got sent to the fucking G League. Okay, Sham's reported, Uh yeah, that was an issue. Nurse in the front office did not see eye to eye on player usage this year, especially when it came to some of the younger, less proven players on the roster. Rare is the executive coaching
pair that is perfectly aligned. But it was notable. When someone says it was notable, that means there was friction a lot. That means that people made comments. Hence the notable part. They were noting it. The results were below everybody's expectations. Banton had a hip injury. He slowed him down, but then he was getting DMPs fully healthy, so did MASSI shut him down because he wanted to keep his value low so that he could sign him for less
money and hide him from other teams. Or did Nick Nurse not want to play a young guy and he wanted to focus on playing the existing older guys that he could trust hard to know. So this was a problem. And then another problem was that the Raptors vibes were horrible. They've been horrible for a couple of years for a team that everybody thought was the standard for blueprinting and NBA team that the Raptors were the team you wanted to replicate. In terms of vibes, everybody was unhappy with
Nick Nurse. O G was unhappy with Nick Nurse, Pascal Siakam, unhappy, Fred van Fleet, Gary Trent Junior. The list goes on and on. I've got I've got examples. Of course, the list is long. The list of pissed off players is long. Pascal Siakam, but it heads with Nick Nurse. When Nick Nurse especially called him out in the bubble for being quote out of rhythm and playing terribly, it could be.
Part of it. I just I don't know. He's already kind of been through deep playoff run and had spectacular games. I'm not sure why he's been so out of rhythm since the restart in the bubble here he hasn't had a lot of games, and I think that's more of another other than here. We are in the playoffs and he's supposed to be our leading guy. I'm just I'm not sure he's been in great rhythm since the restart.
It's too bad because he was spectacular in last year's playoffs and he was spectacular all season long, so we still got some games to play. Hopefully he can get his rhythm.
So it has nothing to do with the fact that Kawhi Leonard has gone and Pascal Siakam has to do all of the scoring. Now. No, he's just not playing well, that's it. He's just not and he needs to play better, okay. And their relationship deteriorated to the point where they were fighting on the sideline, so a ViBe's they're not great. Then you have the Gary Trent Junior issue, and again this has become a pattern where Nick Nurse flames people out in public. So he does he airs amount to dry.
That's his style. I guess you can't knock it because he won a title, but Gary Trent Junior does not like that. Has made mention, Hey, if you're gonna call me out, why don't you take me aside and not air me out in the media. This is what he said about Gary Trent Junior in November. We'd like to get him a lot more aggressive on defense this year. It's disappointing. I will say that it's been I don't know what the word is, it's been a little bit
of a negative. He's capable of really getting after the ball and getting his hands on the ball a lot, and that's what we want him to do. We're gonna get him his shots, we're gonna get him his points, but we want him to be a disruptor. He kind of fits us if he does that. Remember Gary Trent Junior's like six three, not six seven, And if he doesn't, he doesn't fit us at all. And I think some of that is that he hasn't felt great physically for a lot of games this year. So hopefully he's getting
to where he feels good starting tomorrow. Jesus Christ. Trent was not in on that. He did not like that, and of course og In Andobi was unhappy too. I'm happy with his role, unhappy with the relationship between Fred Van Fleet, Pascal Siakam and him. He wanted to leave town for two years. Nick Nurse said, well, we're gonna fix your role. We're gonna give you a bigger role, and then he didn't. And then there's Fred van Fleet. Fred van Fleet of course is unhappy about his contract situation.
Why because there was rumors that he turned down a big extension for four years, one hundred and fourteen million dollars and that made him look like he was being salty, being somewhat greedy. Apparently that contract extension was never offered. So then he followed the Toronto raptors and followed them on Instagram. I'm telling you, the vibes are bad. Their vibes are bad. He wants his money money they're not gonna give him. And then, of course the public reason
for the firing is, oh, we're not succeeding. The success isn't there. Oh we're gonna refocus, resets, we're gonna put the place the personnel to help us reach our Like, let's be real, the success wasn't there, but the success used to be there, not that long ago. Who fires a coach four years removed from winning the title. Who unless you can't fucking stand that guy. Nick was a pioneer of this pace in space offense and that's now the standard in the NBA. He's worked with Massi since
twenty thirteen. He must have been getting on Massi's nerds, and Massi must have been getting on his nerves. And of course Nick didn't help himself when he talked about his future maybe leaving the Raptors before his season even ended. It was the end of season exit interview, while the season had not concluded yet they were still in the playing tournament. He said, oh, I love it here. We've
built this strong culture. We need to all evaluate how he can get back to the culture of winning and being back to a playoff team and getting to the level of winning at all. And Massi was like, cool, you want to figure out how to get back to that culture. I have an idea. You're fucking fired. Get your shit. And they were upset about Nick's comments, of course, because it's like, yo, why are you telling people that you're thinking about leaving? Why are you evaluating your place here?
Why are you telling no one's asked you about this? What does this mean for Toronto? It all depends on who they hire. Really, if they hire Patrick Mtumbo who came from the G League, or Jerry Stackhouse who used to coach the G League, they're probably rebuilding. If they hire email Udoka, who the rumored to hire, they're probably retooling. And those players will stick around. He'll try to get the most out of him that he can, and we'll see.
But the truth is now the scapegoat is gone, and Messiah, all eyes are on you, brother, because the guy that you said was helping you stay backwards and limiting you from getting to the promised Land after you've already gone to the promised land four years ago, he's now gone. The cloak of invisibility on you is gone. Now you only get one chance to fire your head coach. You won, you a chip to wash away your sins, and now everything that happens next is on you. Let's move forward.
What the fuck happened in that Philly Brooklyn game. I'm mine in my business. I'm at Chase Center. I'm eating some Golden State ice cream with the blue and yellow sprinkles on it. I'm getting ready for my hit with my show on the radio, and all of a sudden, I see James Harden get ejected. Claxton ejected, Embiid kick some guy in the nuts, Nick Claxon, let's break it down. So the Sixers roll into Brooklyn. They're up to to zero. You knew Brooklyn was gonna be desperate, That's what they do.
Things got out of hand. It began in the first half. Embiid was issued a flagrant one foul. Why because he he was upset. Embiid hit the floor when Nick Claxton dunked on him. Nick Claxton gave him the good old AI step over. Em Beid was pissed quite obviously because he kicked him in the deck. And then Embiid, one of the first players I've ever seen to do that, not get ejected, only got hit with the flavor one
and Claxton got hit with the technical for taunting. Then, end of the third quarter, James Harden ejected on a truly bizarre call where they thought he punched somebody. Royce O'Neill in the dick as well. It was so ridiculous that Stephen A. Smith said, this big perk, I completely agree with you. That might be the worst dejection I've ever seen. That pretty much sums it up. Yeah, worst dejection I have ever seen. Predictably, of course, the Zebras
continued to get in the way. Nick Claxon, who only got the technical after dunking on Embiid and getting kicked in the dick. He gets a second technical which ejects him. Embiid not ejected. Nick Claxton ejected should not have been hard and ejected should not have been so to recap em bead In kicking in the dick, Harden out punch possibly, and then Claxton ejected for pounding his chest and stepping
over Embeat. And then Jock Vaughn after the game because the Nets lost that game, as you might expect, was upset. He was very upset. What did he have to say this shot going off that first tech?
What did you make of how that all ended with Nick and the tech and Eumbeids staying in the game. I don't think I've ever seen that in my career before, Alex. For a guy to intentionally kick someone in an area that none of us want to be kicked at or towards, and for him to continue to play, I've never seen that before in a game, and a guy continues to be able to play intentional.
Yeah, and wild wild. It's crazy. The refs are already a problem and it's only the first round of the playoffs. It's here, it's going to get nuts. Strap up, put your he belt on. Let's move real quick to this because I have to talk about it because we're here. I wouldn't have talked about it until Monday, but here we are.
Oh.
Game three, Kings Warriors. It was awful. It was one of the worst games I've ever seen in person. It was not beautiful basketball in the least the Zebras it looks like maybe they didn't do anything when you look at the box score between fouls of the Warriors and files of the Kings. But what I've realized is this, it doesn't matter how many fouls you call. It matters when you call them, it matters how you call them, and it matters who you call them on. I think
Kevin Hender had three fouls in the first quarter. Jesus Demonisa Bonus was agitated from the beginning. He was getting punched in the face, elbowed in the face, in the jaw, He's getting the ball slapped down, somebody's hitting his hand. By the way, he's playing with a broken thumb Looney, of course was great. He was putting Draymond out of business four points twenty rebounds. Steph was hunting threes. He
was amping the crowd, up, amping the crowd. That was pumping crowd noise in that chase in or they think they're sneaky, they're pumping music in, they're pumping crowd noise in. But that's not why the King's lost. The reason that the King's lost is because they can't shoot threes anymore. I don't know what's going on, but they were eight for forty at one point from three after fitting like a couple from the scrubs in the last few minutes, twenty percent from three. You can't do that. You can't
do that against our dubs and expect to win. They were shooting three. Kevin Herder three for twenty from three in this series. I think it's just because he's out of shape. I think he's running around chasing clay, chasing. Steph didn't understand that playing for the Sacramento Kings was going to be more work than it was in Atlanta. Shocking, I know, but it was Keegan Murray. He's a rookie. He's not ready for this moment. I think you gotta start Daveyon Mitchell for the rest of the series. And
now I talked to Harrison Barnes. I'm asking them, hey, why didn't you guys push the pace like Mike Brown said that you should and said that you want to and he said, well, they were putting the ball in the basket too much. That's an unacceptable answer to me. No, you push the pace off of missus. You push the pace off of makes. That's what you do. That's how
you get easier buckets. Otherwise you're letting them set out their defense and it makes it more difficult for you to get a make, and then they get out and transition on you. And now it's in Melee. Now it's night Night sleep Mask. Game four is at Chase on Sunday.
I don't know what to make of it. They better make their shots or they're going to go back to too and then Game five is going to be a pressure cooker, and I don't know what I'll do because I won't be in the building and I'll have to watch it on TV live doing a live gamely show, and I think I might just lose my mind. That's all the time that we have for the episode of The Heat Check. Check back Tuesday. We'll have more for you. Check up for the feed for past episodes interviews just
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