Nick Nurse’s playoff history started fast, with mixed results since

Starting in 2014, the Toronto Raptors had been to the playoffs five consecutive years under Dwane Casey, but never got out of the Eastern Conference. After getting swept in consecutive seasons by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Raptors decided they had hit their ceiling with Casey as their coach. So they turned to assistant Nick Nurse in 2018.

Nurse not only got Toronto over the Eastern Conference hump in his first season, but he delivered the first and only NBA title in that franchise’s short history. Two important things worked in Nurse’s favor that season: LeBron bolted for Los Angeles and Kawhi Leonard hit a buzzer-beater for the ages to beat the Sixers in a wonderful seven-game series.

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Today, Nurse is in his first season with the Sixers and the oddsmakers have them at around 18-1 to win the championship. These are pretty long odds, but consider they were 40-1 on April 1, the day before Joel Embiid returned from his knee injury.

The Sixers were 31-8 with Embiid this season, 16-27 without him. Even though he missed Sunday’s season finale as a precaution, optimism is moderate.

So here’s a look at how Nurse’s teams fared in the postseason when he was in Toronto:

The Raptors not only fired their coach following the previous season’s disappointment, they also traded popular star DeMar DeRozan. The deal freed up salary cap space and, more importantly, brought in Kawhi Leonard. Toronto, the conference’s No. 2 seed, rolled Orlando in five, outlasted the Sixers in seven, rallied from an 0-2 hole to beat Milwaukee in six, and surprised the two-time defending champion Warriors in the Finals in six.

After hitting that game-winner against the Sixers in the conference semis, Leonard went on to win Finals MVP by averaging 28 points, 9 rebounds, and 4 assists in the series.

Leonard bolted for a max contract from the Clippers (three years, $103 million) after the title run, but Nurse still guided the Raptors to 53 wins and a division title in the COVID-shortened season. He was the NBA’s coach of the year.

Toronto swept Brooklyn in the opening round in what turned out to be Nurse’s final playoff series win. They then lost to the Celtics in seven in the conference finals as new No. 1 option Pascal Siakam struggled. Still, this arguably was Nurse’s best coaching job.

“They gave everything they had,” Nurse said from the bubble in Orlando. “Special team.”

This season was a disaster. The Raptors had to play all their home games in Tampa because of pandemic travel restrictions in Canada, and every key player missed significant time because of injury. The Raptors went 27-45 and finished a $50 Uber ride out of the playoffs.

The Raptors lost team leader Kyle Lowry to Miami in the offseason, but added Scottie Barnes with the fourth pick in the draft. Nurse did another fine job, leading Toronto to a 48-34 record — a 21-game improvement from the previous season.

The Raptors lost the first three games of their first-round series with the Sixers before winning the next two. They trailed by one at the half in Game 6 before the Sixers pulled away in the third quarter to avoid what would have been an historical collapse.

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Joel Embiid (33 points) and Tyrese Maxey (25 points; 15 in the third quarter) restored order as the Sixers won, 132-97, before a hockey-like hostile environment at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena. The Raptors also gifted Embiid an orbital fracture that would affect the Sixers’ ceiling going forward.

Toronto went 41-41 and lost in a play-in game to Chicago after leading by 19 in the third quarter. As Toronto Star columnist Dave Feschuk pointed out, the Raptors dealt a protected first-round pick to San Antonio at the trade deadline for Jakob Poeltl. They were 10th in the conference at the time of the deal. They finished ninth.

“This was as unlikable a Raptors team as there’s been in the post-championship years,” Feschuk wrote. “At the trade deadline, they were called out by [general manager] Masai Ujiri for their ‘selfish’ play. But if that’s an observation of bad chemistry, it’s also an indictment of faulty roster construction, of a team simply short key pieces that couldn’t overcome those weaknesses.”

Nine days later, the Raptors fired Nurse and he interviewed with Sixers brass shortly thereafter.

The last 10 Sixers coaches and how they fared in their first season:

Note: Chris Ford took over for Randy Ayers during the 2003-04 season.

— Ed Barkowitz