Four years after head coach Nick Nurse led the Toronto Raptors to their first NBA title, the franchise has fired Nurse.
The group issued a news statement on Friday morning confirming the shift in leadership.
“Choices like this are never made lightly or easily, especially when they involve a person who has played a significant role in this franchise’s greatest achievements and has been a dependable leader during some of our team’s most trying times,” President Masai Ujiri said in a statement.
“With this chance, we can regroup, refocus, and assemble the team and players who will enable us to win our next championship.”
The Raptors were unsuccessful.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Ujiri said the last year has been “very disappointing” and that the team has lost some of its momentum.
“It’s not one person or one finger to point,” he said. “And there’s no pointing the finger at Nick. I have to take responsible responsibility for this too. As a leader of this organization, I will always do that, but it wasn’t us this year.”
“I think everybody saw that.”
Ujiri stressed the decision was made by management, and that he did not hear from players.
Nurse joined the Toronto Raptors(opens in a new tab) as an assistant coach in 2013 before being promoted to head coach in 2018.
He helped lead the team to its first NBA championship(opens in a new tab) in 2019, with 58 wins in his first season. Nurse was named the league’s coach of the year for his efforts.
However, the team has not made a deep playoff run since.
Nurse’s contract was set to expire in 2024, and there had been rumblings that the team may be going in a different direction.
“I love it here. I love it here and we have built a really strong culture,” Nurse told the Canadian Press
“We’ve got to all evaluate how we can get that culture back where we need it and get back to being a playoff team and then getting to a level of winning it all. That’s what we want to do.”
Last season, the Raptors were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Philadelphia 76ers
