Speaker 1: You're tuned into Heat Check with Trystal Quick.
Speaker 2: On this emergency episode of the Heat Check. We're doing
Speaker 2: it again because the first take wasn't recording. You're welcome.
Speaker 2: We convene on this Friday. Not because of the Kings
Speaker 2: versus the Warriors. That game was trash buckets, but because
Speaker 2: of the seismic news from North of the Border alert Alert.
Speaker 2: The Raptors have fired Nick Nurse. They have fired him.
Speaker 2: He is fired. He is fired. My god, last too unpacked.
Speaker 2: Let's get into it, folks. Nick dropped that generic gas
Speaker 2: beat that should be Rihanna. What a way to wake
Speaker 2: up in the morning after a late night game. Guys,
Speaker 2: Oh my god. So I was in San Francisco, super
Speaker 2: excited game, our dubs came to play, doesn't matter how
Speaker 2: they dogwalk the Kings, it happened, uh, And I went
Speaker 2: to the postgame presser, got back super late, made some tiktoks,
Speaker 2: talked to some friends, and I crashed out. And then
Speaker 2: at like six thirty in the morning, my time, my
Speaker 2: phone's blown up. My phone's blown up. Nick Nurse, trista.
Speaker 2: Nick Nurse has been fired by the Raptors. Let's get
Speaker 2: on it. And we speculated about it, right, we did.
Speaker 2: We thought maybe he would quit though, like we really did.
Speaker 2: We thought. We talked about it multiple times on the podcast.
Speaker 2: I thought he would leave and go maybe to a
Speaker 2: place like, I don't know, Philly or Houston or Washington
Speaker 2: if they fire Wes Unsel Junior, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: just thought maybe it would be in his own hands.
Speaker 2: And it kind of seems strange because the Raptors, you
Speaker 2: could say they had a disappointing season at forty one
Speaker 2: and forty one, but they did still make the play
Speaker 2: in They squandered a game against the Bulls where they
Speaker 2: were up big. They could be in the playoffs right now.
Speaker 2: You could argue that this season really had very little
Speaker 2: to do with Nick Nurse. Right. You look at last
Speaker 2: season the Raptors went forty eight and thirty before they
Speaker 2: finished fifth in the East. The year before that, of course,
Speaker 2: it was horrible, but that was post COVID and they
Speaker 2: were in Tampa Bay. They were twenty seven and forty five,
Speaker 2: but again, they were not with their families, they were
Speaker 2: not in a city that was familiar. There were no fans.
Speaker 2: Every game was a road game. During the COVID season itself,
Speaker 2: they were fifty three and nineteen, and before the league
Speaker 2: shut down they were the I think they were the
Speaker 2: best team in the East. And the year before COVID,
Speaker 2: of course, they won the title. So I'm not really
Speaker 2: sure why he's gone, but he's gone as a Raptor
Speaker 2: head coach. He finishes three ninety and two, twenty seven
Speaker 2: and twenty five and sixteen in the playoff. That's really tough.
Speaker 2: That's a really good winning percentage, sixty three percent winning percentage.
Speaker 2: How many fucking head coaches are doing that? Who who's
Speaker 2: doing that? Not many? So what happened, Well, the truth
Speaker 2: is the roster was weird. We know that I talked
Speaker 2: to him at summer league. He gave me this spiel
Speaker 2: that he loved six seven to six nine guys that
Speaker 2: were all athletic, positive wingspan, could set screens, could be
Speaker 2: the roller, could be the screen setter, could be the
Speaker 2: guy coming off ball passing, and that, by the way,
Speaker 2: check that out on the fee if you want to
Speaker 2: know more about how he sees basketball. But he also
Speaker 2: said that he wanted a rim protector and that was
Speaker 2: supposed to be Christian Colloco, right, And Christian Colloco really
Speaker 2: didn't see the court at all, and they didn't have
Speaker 2: rim protection pretty much all year until they acquired slow,
Speaker 2: non nimble Yaka Perl at the deadline. So, okay, I
Speaker 2: get it, but how much of that roster was really
Speaker 2: on Nick Nurse? And the hard truth I think that
Speaker 2: most people in the Raptors front office don't want to
Speaker 2: face is that their roster philosophy might not be correct. Right,
Speaker 2: you want a zig while everybody else is zagging. Sometimes
Speaker 2: you got a zig back because whatever you're doing isn't working.
Speaker 2: You've got a roster that overlaps way too much. We
Speaker 2: know that, right. You got og and and Obi, you
Speaker 2: got Scottie Barnes, you got Chris Bouchet. All of them
Speaker 2: are playing a similar style of basketball, and you can't
Speaker 2: really play them all at the same time. One guy's
Speaker 2: making nine million, one guy's making eighteen million, one guy's
Speaker 2: making twelve million. None of them are elite shooters. None,
Speaker 2: As a Lebron would say, none of them are exactly lasers.
Speaker 2: And that's the Achilles heel for this team, because if
Speaker 2: you look at their three point shooting, you look at
Speaker 2: their field goal percentage, they were third worse than the
Speaker 2: NBA of both those things. That's not good. That's yo,
Speaker 2: straight up trash bucket. You don't want that, not in
Speaker 2: this league. They sacrifice shooting because they're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: all of our length, we're gonna be this amazing defense,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna shut guys down. Doesn't matter if we score,
Speaker 2: because we're gonna be so good at shutting other teams down.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you finish tenth in defensive rating. That's not
Speaker 2: good enough, not when you can't shoot, not when you
Speaker 2: can't score. And that got them exactly what you would expect,
Speaker 2: a five hundred record. So knowing just how bad they shoot,
Speaker 2: and knowing that they struggled on defense for long stretches
Speaker 2: of time, it's kind of incredible. Actually they won forty
Speaker 2: one games. You could actually say Nick Nurse did some
Speaker 2: of his best coaching this year. And of course there's
Speaker 2: a disparity between the old players on the roster and
Speaker 2: the young players the timeline. As they would say, I'm
Speaker 2: not talking about thirty year olds and twenty year olds.
Speaker 2: I'm talking like first and second year players and dudes
Speaker 2: on like their second contracts, Guys that are in their
Speaker 2: mid thirties. Take a guy like delanno'banon Nick gave him
Speaker 2: run in the beginning of the season. He bawled. He
Speaker 2: was averaging eleven minutes per game for fourteen out of
Speaker 2: fifteen first games of the year. Ask me why I
Speaker 2: know that?
Speaker 1: Do not?
Speaker 2: I was interested in Delano Benton earlier on in the year.
Speaker 2: He put off twenty seven to four and four, three steals,
Speaker 2: two blocks in the fourteenth game, and I was like this,
Speaker 2: de lonal' Benton guy is good. Then happened he got
Speaker 2: sent to the fucking G League. Okay, Sham's reported, Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: that was an issue. Nurse in the front office did
Speaker 2: not see eye to eye on player usage this year,
Speaker 2: especially when it came to some of the younger, less
Speaker 2: proven players on the roster. Rare is the executive coaching
Speaker 2: pair that is perfectly aligned. But it was notable. When
Speaker 2: someone says it was notable, that means there was friction
Speaker 2: a lot. That means that people made comments. Hence the
Speaker 2: notable part. They were noting it. The results were below
Speaker 2: everybody's expectations. Banton had a hip injury. He slowed him down,
Speaker 2: but then he was getting DMPs fully healthy, so did
Speaker 2: MASSI shut him down because he wanted to keep his
Speaker 2: value low so that he could sign him for less
Speaker 2: money and hide him from other teams. Or did Nick
Speaker 2: Nurse not want to play a young guy and he
Speaker 2: wanted to focus on playing the existing older guys that
Speaker 2: he could trust hard to know. So this was a problem.
Speaker 2: And then another problem was that the Raptors vibes were horrible.
Speaker 2: They've been horrible for a couple of years for a
Speaker 2: team that everybody thought was the standard for blueprinting and
Speaker 2: NBA team that the Raptors were the team you wanted
Speaker 2: to replicate. In terms of vibes, everybody was unhappy with
Speaker 2: Nick Nurse. O G was unhappy with Nick Nurse, Pascal Siakam, unhappy,
Speaker 2: Fred van Fleet, Gary Trent Junior. The list goes on
Speaker 2: and on. I've got I've got examples. Of course, the
Speaker 2: list is long. The list of pissed off players is long.
Speaker 2: Pascal Siakam, but it heads with Nick Nurse. When Nick
Speaker 2: Nurse especially called him out in the bubble for being
Speaker 2: quote out of rhythm and playing terribly, it could be.
Speaker 3: Part of it. I just I don't know. He's already
Speaker 3: kind of been through deep playoff run and had spectacular games.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure why he's been so out of rhythm
Speaker 3: since the restart in the bubble here he hasn't had
Speaker 3: a lot of games, and I think that's more of
Speaker 3: another other than here. We are in the playoffs and
Speaker 3: he's supposed to be our leading guy. I'm just I'm
Speaker 3: not sure he's been in great rhythm since the restart.
Speaker 3: It's too bad because he was spectacular in last year's
Speaker 3: playoffs and he was spectacular all season long, so we
Speaker 3: still got some games to play. Hopefully he can get
Speaker 3: his rhythm.
Speaker 2: So it has nothing to do with the fact that
Speaker 2: Kawhi Leonard has gone and Pascal Siakam has to do
Speaker 2: all of the scoring. Now. No, he's just not playing well,
Speaker 2: that's it. He's just not and he needs to play better, okay.
Speaker 2: And their relationship deteriorated to the point where they were
Speaker 2: fighting on the sideline, so a ViBe's they're not great.
Speaker 2: Then you have the Gary Trent Junior issue, and again
Speaker 2: this has become a pattern where Nick Nurse flames people
Speaker 2: out in public. So he does he airs amount to dry.
Speaker 2: That's his style. I guess you can't knock it because
Speaker 2: he won a title, but Gary Trent Junior does not
Speaker 2: like that. Has made mention, Hey, if you're gonna call
Speaker 2: me out, why don't you take me aside and not
Speaker 2: air me out in the media. This is what he
Speaker 2: said about Gary Trent Junior in November. We'd like to
Speaker 2: get him a lot more aggressive on defense this year.
Speaker 2: It's disappointing. I will say that it's been I don't
Speaker 2: know what the word is, it's been a little bit
Speaker 2: of a negative. He's capable of really getting after the
Speaker 2: ball and getting his hands on the ball a lot,
Speaker 2: and that's what we want him to do. We're gonna
Speaker 2: get him his shots, we're gonna get him his points,
Speaker 2: but we want him to be a disruptor. He kind
Speaker 2: of fits us if he does that. Remember Gary Trent
Speaker 2: Junior's like six three, not six seven, And if he doesn't,
Speaker 2: he doesn't fit us at all. And I think some
Speaker 2: of that is that he hasn't felt great physically for
Speaker 2: a lot of games this year. So hopefully he's getting
Speaker 2: to where he feels good starting tomorrow. Jesus Christ. Trent
Speaker 2: was not in on that. He did not like that,
Speaker 2: and of course og In Andobi was unhappy too. I'm
Speaker 2: happy with his role, unhappy with the relationship between Fred
Speaker 2: Van Fleet, Pascal Siakam and him. He wanted to leave
Speaker 2: town for two years. Nick Nurse said, well, we're gonna
Speaker 2: fix your role. We're gonna give you a bigger role,
Speaker 2: and then he didn't. And then there's Fred van Fleet.
Speaker 2: Fred van Fleet of course is unhappy about his contract situation.
Speaker 2: Why because there was rumors that he turned down a
Speaker 2: big extension for four years, one hundred and fourteen million
Speaker 2: dollars and that made him look like he was being salty,
Speaker 2: being somewhat greedy. Apparently that contract extension was never offered.
Speaker 2: So then he followed the Toronto raptors and followed them
Speaker 2: on Instagram. I'm telling you, the vibes are bad. Their
Speaker 2: vibes are bad. He wants his money money they're not
Speaker 2: gonna give him. And then, of course the public reason
Speaker 2: for the firing is, oh, we're not succeeding. The success
Speaker 2: isn't there. Oh we're gonna refocus, resets, we're gonna put
Speaker 2: the place the personnel to help us reach our Like,
Speaker 2: let's be real, the success wasn't there, but the success
Speaker 2: used to be there, not that long ago. Who fires
Speaker 2: a coach four years removed from winning the title. Who
Speaker 2: unless you can't fucking stand that guy. Nick was a
Speaker 2: pioneer of this pace in space offense and that's now
Speaker 2: the standard in the NBA. He's worked with Massi since
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. He must have been getting on Massi's nerds,
Speaker 2: and Massi must have been getting on his nerves. And
Speaker 2: of course Nick didn't help himself when he talked about
Speaker 2: his future maybe leaving the Raptors before his season even ended.
Speaker 2: It was the end of season exit interview, while the
Speaker 2: season had not concluded yet they were still in the
Speaker 2: playing tournament. He said, oh, I love it here. We've
Speaker 2: built this strong culture. We need to all evaluate how
Speaker 2: he can get back to the culture of winning and
Speaker 2: being back to a playoff team and getting to the
Speaker 2: level of winning at all. And Massi was like, cool,
Speaker 2: you want to figure out how to get back to
Speaker 2: that culture. I have an idea. You're fucking fired. Get
Speaker 2: your shit. And they were upset about Nick's comments, of course,
Speaker 2: because it's like, yo, why are you telling people that
Speaker 2: you're thinking about leaving? Why are you evaluating your place here?
Speaker 2: Why are you telling no one's asked you about this?
Speaker 2: What does this mean for Toronto? It all depends on
Speaker 2: who they hire. Really, if they hire Patrick Mtumbo who
Speaker 2: came from the G League, or Jerry Stackhouse who used
Speaker 2: to coach the G League, they're probably rebuilding. If they
Speaker 2: hire email Udoka, who the rumored to hire, they're probably retooling.
Speaker 2: And those players will stick around. He'll try to get
Speaker 2: the most out of him that he can, and we'll see.
Speaker 2: But the truth is now the scapegoat is gone, and Messiah,
Speaker 2: all eyes are on you, brother, because the guy that
Speaker 2: you said was helping you stay backwards and limiting you
Speaker 2: from getting to the promised Land after you've already gone
Speaker 2: to the promised land four years ago, he's now gone.
Speaker 2: The cloak of invisibility on you is gone. Now you
Speaker 2: only get one chance to fire your head coach. You won,
Speaker 2: you a chip to wash away your sins, and now
Speaker 2: everything that happens next is on you. Let's move forward.
Speaker 2: What the fuck happened in that Philly Brooklyn game. I'm
Speaker 2: mine in my business. I'm at Chase Center. I'm eating
Speaker 2: some Golden State ice cream with the blue and yellow
Speaker 2: sprinkles on it. I'm getting ready for my hit with
Speaker 2: my show on the radio, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: I see James Harden get ejected. Claxton ejected, Embiid kick
Speaker 2: some guy in the nuts, Nick Claxon, let's break it down.
Speaker 2: So the Sixers roll into Brooklyn. They're up to to zero.
Speaker 2: You knew Brooklyn was gonna be desperate, That's what they do.
Speaker 2: Things got out of hand. It began in the first half.
Speaker 2: Embiid was issued a flagrant one foul. Why because he
Speaker 2: he was upset. Embiid hit the floor when Nick Claxton
Speaker 2: dunked on him. Nick Claxton gave him the good old
Speaker 2: AI step over. Em Beid was pissed quite obviously because
Speaker 2: he kicked him in the deck. And then Embiid, one
Speaker 2: of the first players I've ever seen to do that,
Speaker 2: not get ejected, only got hit with the flavor one
Speaker 2: and Claxton got hit with the technical for taunting. Then,
Speaker 2: end of the third quarter, James Harden ejected on a
Speaker 2: truly bizarre call where they thought he punched somebody. Royce
Speaker 2: O'Neill in the dick as well. It was so ridiculous
Speaker 2: that Stephen A. Smith said, this big perk, I completely
Speaker 2: agree with you. That might be the worst dejection I've
Speaker 2: ever seen. That pretty much sums it up. Yeah, worst
Speaker 2: dejection I have ever seen. Predictably, of course, the Zebras
Speaker 2: continued to get in the way. Nick Claxon, who only
Speaker 2: got the technical after dunking on Embiid and getting kicked
Speaker 2: in the dick. He gets a second technical which ejects him.
Speaker 2: Embiid not ejected. Nick Claxton ejected should not have been
Speaker 2: hard and ejected should not have been so to recap
Speaker 2: em bead In kicking in the dick, Harden out punch possibly,
Speaker 2: and then Claxton ejected for pounding his chest and stepping
Speaker 2: over Embeat. And then Jock Vaughn after the game because
Speaker 2: the Nets lost that game, as you might expect, was upset.
Speaker 2: He was very upset. What did he have to say
Speaker 2: this shot going off that first tech?
Speaker 1: What did you make of how that all ended with
Speaker 1: Nick and the tech and Eumbeids staying in the game.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen that in my career before, Alex.
Speaker 1: For a guy to intentionally kick someone in an area
Speaker 1: that none of us want to be kicked at or towards,
Speaker 1: and for him to continue to play, I've never seen
Speaker 1: that before in a game, and a guy continues to
Speaker 1: be able to play intentional.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and wild wild. It's crazy. The refs are already
Speaker 2: a problem and it's only the first round of the playoffs.
Speaker 2: It's here, it's going to get nuts. Strap up, put
Speaker 2: your he belt on. Let's move real quick to this
Speaker 2: because I have to talk about it because we're here.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have talked about it until Monday, but here
Speaker 2: we are.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Game three, Kings Warriors. It was awful. It was one
Speaker 2: of the worst games I've ever seen in person. It
Speaker 2: was not beautiful basketball in the least the Zebras it
Speaker 2: looks like maybe they didn't do anything when you look
Speaker 2: at the box score between fouls of the Warriors and
Speaker 2: files of the Kings. But what I've realized is this,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how many fouls you call. It matters
Speaker 2: when you call them, it matters how you call them,
Speaker 2: and it matters who you call them on. I think
Speaker 2: Kevin Hender had three fouls in the first quarter. Jesus
Speaker 2: Demonisa Bonus was agitated from the beginning. He was getting
Speaker 2: punched in the face, elbowed in the face, in the jaw,
Speaker 2: He's getting the ball slapped down, somebody's hitting his hand.
Speaker 2: By the way, he's playing with a broken thumb Looney,
Speaker 2: of course was great. He was putting Draymond out of
Speaker 2: business four points twenty rebounds. Steph was hunting threes. He
Speaker 2: was amping the crowd, up, amping the crowd. That was
Speaker 2: pumping crowd noise in that chase in or they think
Speaker 2: they're sneaky, they're pumping music in, they're pumping crowd noise in.
Speaker 2: But that's not why the King's lost. The reason that
Speaker 2: the King's lost is because they can't shoot threes anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on, but they were eight
Speaker 2: for forty at one point from three after fitting like
Speaker 2: a couple from the scrubs in the last few minutes,
Speaker 2: twenty percent from three. You can't do that. You can't
Speaker 2: do that against our dubs and expect to win. They
Speaker 2: were shooting three. Kevin Herder three for twenty from three
Speaker 2: in this series. I think it's just because he's out
Speaker 2: of shape. I think he's running around chasing clay, chasing.
Speaker 2: Steph didn't understand that playing for the Sacramento Kings was
Speaker 2: going to be more work than it was in Atlanta. Shocking,
Speaker 2: I know, but it was Keegan Murray. He's a rookie.
Speaker 2: He's not ready for this moment. I think you gotta
Speaker 2: start Daveyon Mitchell for the rest of the series. And
Speaker 2: now I talked to Harrison Barnes. I'm asking them, hey,
Speaker 2: why didn't you guys push the pace like Mike Brown
Speaker 2: said that you should and said that you want to
Speaker 2: and he said, well, they were putting the ball in
Speaker 2: the basket too much. That's an unacceptable answer to me. No,
Speaker 2: you push the pace off of missus. You push the
Speaker 2: pace off of makes. That's what you do. That's how
Speaker 2: you get easier buckets. Otherwise you're letting them set out
Speaker 2: their defense and it makes it more difficult for you
Speaker 2: to get a make, and then they get out and
Speaker 2: transition on you. And now it's in Melee. Now it's
Speaker 2: night Night sleep Mask. Game four is at Chase on Sunday.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to make of it. They better
Speaker 2: make their shots or they're going to go back to
Speaker 2: too and then Game five is going to be a
Speaker 2: pressure cooker, and I don't know what I'll do because
Speaker 2: I won't be in the building and I'll have to
Speaker 2: watch it on TV live doing a live gamely show,
Speaker 2: and I think I might just lose my mind. That's
Speaker 2: all the time that we have for the episode of
Speaker 2: The Heat Check. Check back Tuesday. We'll have more for you.
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Speaker 2: all right. I'll see you guys Tuesday. Thanks for listening.