Zoomer Magazine – September 2019

(^64) – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 everythingzoomer.com
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he would one day be an NBA coach.The erstwhile slow-
moving three-point shooter from the University of-
Northern Iowa would be an assistant coach at two uni-
versities, a coach at one and spend 11 years coaching
in the boneyard of broken hoop dreams that was
basketball’s D-League (now the G-League).
There’s a school of behaviourism, popularized by
the sociologist Erving Goffman, called The Looking
Glass Self. It basically says we tend to become what
we’re told we are. If you’re told repeatedly you’re stu-
pid, you will believe it. Constant validation will pro-
duce self-confidence.
The D-League wasn’t a place that fostered belief.
Full of shifting rosters and players with un-
fulfilled potential always on the verge
of falling off the ladder, it took a
special kind of determination
to pull oneself up from this
vulnerable career point.
Not surprisingly, self-
belief was a big part of
the championship team
that has made Nurse a
legend. The Raptors’
win against the Golden
State dynasty has been
examined from count-
less angles (not least of
which is the sore-loser
“asterisk” argument that
blames a series of Warrior in-
juries for Toronto’s win).
But not enough has been said
about the almost-Hollywood as-
pect of this underdog story. The 2018-19
Raptors were marked by the contributions of players
with D League experience – key among them Pascal
Siakam, who was all arms and legs and potential but
still a question mark in his rookie year. In the cham-
pionship, he became almost an extension of the team
superstar Kawhi Leonard, a go-to pass target when
Leonard would be double- and triple-teamed.
Another playoff hero, Fred VanVleet, wasn’t drafted
by an NBA team because he initially refused to play in
the D League for a salary of $20,000. After signing a
summer league deal with the Raptors, he agreed to D
League assignments and played on the development
league championship team with Siakam in 2017.
In the NBA Finals, VanVleet played like a man pos-
sessed, blanketing Golden State’s Stephen Curry, and
in the deciding Game 6, scored 22 points off the bench
with five three-pointers.
Even The Man, Kawhi Leonard, without whom it’s
understood there would be no Raptors championship,
was the 15th pick in the 2011 draft. Arguably the best play-
er in the NBA today, he was deemed less promising than
14 other draftees. Much to the chagrin of Raptors fans,
Leonard proved he could control the game off the court
as well, deftly orchestrating a behind-the-scenes deal to
play in his hometown with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Nurse, who spent his whole career with something to
prove, has reached the top of the game, inspiring play-
ers with something to prove. He was originally chosen
as an assistant coach by Raptors president Masai Ujiri,
who has demonstrated the same ethos, and who has had
the guts to go for a title with a superstar they might have
for only one year and a team of mostly low-ranked
draft picks.
Nurse has gone from a career-
journeyman coach to a god who
walks among us. A guitar god
no less. A few weeks af-
ter the championship, he
showed up on stage with
the Arkells, shredding it
on Toronto’s Budweiser
Stage. (There hasn’t
been a guitar-playing
coach in the city since
the late Leafs’ boss
Pat Burns jammed on
“Brown Eyed Girl” with
the Good Brothers in the
early ’90s.)
There’s even a shrine to
Nurse at the corner of John
and Wellington streets, outside
the office of the digital design firm
One Method, which created it.
Fittingly, St. Nick has signed on as coach of Canada’s
men’s basketball team in advance of the 2020 Olympics.
While cheering the fact that an NBA Championship
coach might attract actual Canadian stars for the first
time in years (I’m looking at you, Andrew Wiggins),
there is also the fact that the Canadian team is, and al-
ways has been, loaded with players with development
league experience and untapped potential.
Currently ranked 23rd by the International Basketball
Federation, Canada pulled off a first-time silver at the
Pan Am games in Toronto in 2015. I saw them beat the
Dominican Republic at the Mattamy Centre — the for-
mer Maple Leaf Gardens — in a game filled with sloppy
play and occasional flashes of startling talent.
The workhorse players on Team Canada may never
again have a coach like Nick Nurse, who understands
where they are and where they want to be. And if they
want to get there, he has shown them the way as effect-
ively as Google Maps.
The Visionary:
Raptors president
Masai Ujiri with
the Larry O’Brien
Championship
Trophy