Alonzo Adams-USA TODAY Sports
Raptors Are Prepared for Nick Nurse's Craziest Defensive Schemes: 'He's Nicky Nurse, Baby'
Really, a box-man-to-man?
It was a defensive scheme Chris Boucher didn't even know the Toronto Raptors had in their playbook. They'd gone with the box-and-one famously against Steph Curry in the 2019 NBA Finals and rolled it out from time to time against opposing superstars, but "the box-man-to-man" was a janky defensive scheme Boucher said he didn't even know existed.
That's life on a Nick Nurse-coached basketball team. There's the plan and then there's whatever he scribbles down in the middle of the game. At any moment, he could totally change the defensive scheme and throw something totally new onto the floor.
"Coach been doing a really good job just to making sure that we knew we were ready for all the defensive scheme and after that whatever he says to do it we just go out there and execute," said Boucher following Thursday's practice. "It's a playoff so what else, who knows what else he has in his book that we didn't see yet but it's gonna come out and y’all are gonna see it and we all got to learn it the same time."
Plan A, of course, is to force the Philadelphia 76ers' to play Raptors basketball. Toronto wants to speed things up, play in transition, grab offensive boards, and pester Joel Embiid with multiple defenders. Historically, it's a strategy that's worked. Nurse is 14-7 against the 76ers since he took over the job in 2018.
But what happens if things don't necessarily go as planned?
"I mean, come on, it’s Nicky Nurse, baby," Fred VanVleet joked. "In all seriousness, we’ve shown that we can win in a thousand different ways this year, there’s a lot of different ways to do it and we’ve explored just about all of them, we’ve had ugly wins, we’ve had good wins, we’ve had shootouts, we’ve had slugfests, as coach said the other day, but, I think that’s the versatility of being able to have different things that you can go to but we gotta be who we are."
Typically in the NBA playoffs, the team with the best player on the court wins. If that's the case, the 76ers are going to take the series on the back of their superstar center. But Nurse and the Raptors certainly have a few tricks up their sleeve and if Toronto has one big advantage over Philadelphia, it's the man calling the shots from the sideline.
Further Reading
Raptors need to avoid 'slugfest' by dictating tempo to 76ers
Why Scottie Barnes' 3-point shooting will be the X-factor for Toronto's offense
Nick Nurse may not win Coach of the Year, but the Raptors' season has shown there's nobody better
