Nick Nurse is out as head coach of the Toronto Raptors. The coach led the team to an improbably NBA championship in 2019, and four years later, he’s looking for a new job. Nurse’s job search shouldn’t take all that long, though. A coach with his track record of success will be in-demand, and rumors that the Houston Rockets are interested in his services have already bubbled up. A Nick Nurse-Rockets marriage would be an excellent fit, and here’s why.

Nurse has an incredible coaching resume that started after his college basketball career ended in Northern Iowa. He went on to play professionally in England before returning to help coach his alma mater and then becoming a player-coach in the British Basketball League (BBL).

Those jobs kickstarted a coaching career that would take Nurse to multiple jobs in the BBL, the Belgian professional league, several levels of college basketball, the NBA D-League, and finally in the NBA where he won a title with the Raptors.

In the 2022-23 season, Nurse brought the Raptors to the NBA Play-In Tournament before losing to the Chicago Bulls. Between missing the playoffs and the rumored friction between Nurse and Raptors president Masai Ujiri, it’s not a surprise that the team and coach parted ways this offseason.

Now a free agent, Nurse is the perfect pick to fix the Rockets starting next season.

3. Nick Nurse knows the organization

Before Nick Nurse became an assistant and ultimately the head coach of the Raptors, he was one of the most successful D-League (now known as the NBA G League) coaches of all time. His last stint in professional basketball’s developmental league came with the Rio Grande Vipers, which is the Rockets G League affiliate.

Nurse last coached the Vipers in 2013, back when the Rockets were a very different organization than they are today. Back then, the owner was Leslie Alexander, and general manager Darryl Morey ran the organization.

Today, that power structure is out, and owner Tillman Fertitta and GM Rafael Stone are in charge. Still, Nurse is familiar with Texas basketball and knows the general ways the franchise is structured and operates from his time with Rio Grande.

This is an advantage to both Nurse and the Rockets if and when the team brings him back.

2. He’s developed young players incredibly well in the past

One of the ironies of the Nick Nurse firing is that, apparently, one of the issues between Nurse and Ujiri is that Nurse wouldn’t play the Raptors' young prospects as much as the team president would like this season.

The reason this is ironic is that Nurse made his career on developing young players.

Coaching in the D-League was, in and of itself, an exercise in developing young players, and Nurse did it well. He not only won championships with his prospects in that league but sent 23 of his players to the NBA.

In Toronto, Nurse got the job after the team fired Dwane Casey because of his role in developing young Raptors like Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet.

The Nick Nurse-Rockets match is a good one because young players are pretty much all Houston has at this point. The core of the Rockets roster — Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., Alperen Sengun, Kenyon Martin Jr., Tari Eason, Daishen Nix, TyTy Washington Jr.,
Usman Garuba, and Josh Christopher — are all under 22 years old.

Nurse’s deft touch with young, talented players would serve this roster well, especially when the roster includes a likely top-three pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.

1. Nurse is a championship-winning NBA head coach

Quick, how many active NBA championship-winning head coaches are there in the league in 2023?

The answer is just five, including Nick Nurse.

Nurse is one of a small fraternity that includes the Philadelphia 76ers’ Doc Rivers, Indiana Pacers’ Rick Carlisle, Milwaukee Bucks’ Mike Budenholzer, and Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue.

That will play well in the Rockets locker room, as part of the reason the team parted ways with Stephen Silas is that he wasn’t able to establish a positive and winning culture around the team. The young Rockets have a lot of big personalities, even with the roster’s collectively young age.

A Nick Nurse-Rockets pairing would make sense because Nurse would immediately garner the respect of the player on the team due to his recent winning ways. Silas came in as a respected NBA assistant, who was best known for his famous father, Paul Silas, an NBA star who retired 20 years before most of the Rockets were born.

Nurse won a title in 2019 with Raptors and superstar Kawhi Leonard. That accomplishment is fresh in the memories of the Rockets players, most of whom were in late high school or their early college days when it happened. That is an immediate respect-getter, which is just what the Rockets need.