Nick Nurse's decision to call a timeout with his Toronto Raptors leading by six points late in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday has been a hot topic discussion over the last couple of days.
Of course, the Golden State Warriors went on a 9-0 run after the timeout, retaking a three-point lead that they would not relinquish.
Whether or not Nurse's choice to take a timeout ended up killing the Raptors' momentum and giving it all to the Warriors will never be known for sure, but it was certainly an odd decision.
However, Nurse is defending what he did and said that you can't sit there and scrutinize every little thing:




“Listen, I'm like anybody that was there that understands the outcome of that one changes things a little bit,” said Nurse, according to Michael Grange of Rogers Sportsnet. “But I'll say this: I'm absolutely thrilled to be coaching in another finals game. This is awesome, right? All these things when you look back on them, every single thing you do, if it doesn't turn out, you wish you would have called another play or had somebody else in or got somebody else a shot, et cetera.”
“I think if you remove that from it and you watch it, we ran a great play out of the timeout where Gasol absolutely got clobbered for a no-call. Kyle had a wide-open three with a minute to go. We ran some nice stuff and got exactly what we wanted. I'm not sure that that timeout had anything to do with about 14 plays after that. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.”
The main argument that fans and media pundits are making is that Nurse gave a clearly gassed Warriors team a moment to breathe during his first timeout, which allowed Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry to get their legs back and drain three 3-pointers between them to take the lead.
Was Nurse's timeout the reason that happened? As Nurse said: maybe, maybe not, but the fact of the matter is that there were hundreds of other plays that dictated the outcome of the game, so focusing on one instance is probably a bit silly.
The Raptors lead the series 3-2. Game 6 is on Thursday night.