Nick Nurse has had an ‘interesting experience’ coaching against Joel Embiid. Now, they’re on the same team.

New Sixers coach Nick Nurse is getting quite the star at the center of his roster in Joel Embiid, a player he’s no stranger to battling with in the past.

So it was no surprise on Thursday that Nurse was asked about his previous interactions with the reigning MVP — both on the court and in the media — including Embiid coining the phrase “The Nick Nurse Route” in reference to a coach complaining his way into favorable calls. But Nurse seems genuinely thrilled to no longer have to coach against Embiid.

”First of all, I think that it’s been an interesting experience coaching against Joel,” Nurse said during his introductory press conference on Thursday. “In many different seasons, we threw almost everything I think you could possibly throw at a guy because it was that hard for us to try to stop him. So we threw a lot at him… there’s one part of that.”

“You know, the rest of that, it’s a little bit entertaining for me, because I understand there were some exchanges and things. I didn’t even really — when you’re out there and you’re in the heat of really competing, I didn’t even really remember them. But I accidentally had my TV on yesterday and I saw a couple of them and they were pretty good. I was like, man, I don’t even remember that. Now I know what everybody’s talking about here a little bit. But then it kind of grew to such a respect level of him, it was we throw one thing [at him] and, even in that playoff series, a game later he would adjust to it. And we were kind of banking on this, you know, and he would adjust so we couldn’t even do it. I guess again, just a tremendous amount of respect from me.”

“And then as far as building the relationship, listen, I think he really competes and he really wants to be great. It’s a collaborative effort. ‘How do you see it? Here’s how I see it. Let’s figure this out.’ And for me, I just want him to have as much success as possible and that translates to as much team success as possible as well.”

» READ MORE: Get to know Sixers coach Nick Nurse, from those who covered him with the Toronto Raptors

The respect must go both ways, as The Inquirer’s Keith Pompey reported that Embiid met with Nurse before Nurse was hired and that the meeting went well. However, Daryl Morey, the Sixers’ president of basketball operations previously said that players wouldn’t be involved in the coaching search.

”I think for a coach to succeed in this league, he has to have great relationships with his players, especially his top players,” Morey said. “Coach Nurse has talked to all the top players on the team. But in terms of the final decision on [the] coach, that was mine.”

As for what you can expect from the Nurse-Embiid pairing on game days next season, one thing seems certain: Nurse will be playing the load management game with Embiid, something that worked well when he won the 2019 NBA championship following a season of load management for Kawhi Leonard.

“I think it will help a lot,” Nurse said of his experience in the past with managing a player’s workload. “Like you said, the 2018-19 season, we went into that with Kawhi, who hadn’t played a lot in a long time, so we knew there was going to be — load management is the term, I’m not sure it was the term at the time, but we knew there was basically a plan of how we were going to [do it]. We looked at the season in totality and this is what we think is a good plan, kind of break it down month-by-month, and then kind of like everything else, you shift the path or change as more evidence or information becomes available to you and go from there. But I think it’s almost like a subset of the season when you’ve got a player like that. It is a long-term season-long vision and plan you have to put together, and then you kind of have to build it up and adjust and change as you go. I think that going through that with Toronto in ‘18-19 should be very valuable.”

That season also included the first playoff battle between Nurse and Embiid — and ended with Embiid in tears following a Game 7 buzzer-beater from Leonard.