While Nick Nurse can hardly be blamed for the Sixers’ miserable start, it’s fair to wonder what it means for the team’s head coach if the second half goes poorly.
You can call for Daryl Morey’s head. You can call for the Sixers to at least take a serious look into breaking up the Big 3 in the offseason. You can choose to be bleak about the long-term future of the franchise as Joel Embiid’s knee continues to ail. However this season ends, it seems inevitable that it will be a massive disappointment. But, one thing you cannot do is call for Nick Nurse’s job.
The second-year Sixers coach has dealt with headache after headache this year. Embiid has been constantly unavailable and has been surrounded by lots of negative press this year that Nurse has often found himself in the middle of only because he does regular press conferences. Paul George has greatly underachieved and has missed his fair share of games as well. Jared McCain looked like the Rookie of the Year before a torn meniscus ended his season. All of these bad breaks have led to Nurse dealing with lineups that sometimes look more like G-League lineups than NBA ones.
Remember, Nurse is not used to losing. The Iowa native has a winning percentage of nearly .600 as a head coach between his time manning benches in Toronto and Philadelphia. He won an NBA championship in his first season as the head coach of the Raptors. The only other head coaches to win championships in their first seasons at a new job are Phil Jackson with the Lakers, Larry Brown with the Pistons, Pat Riley in Miami, Steve Kerr in Golden State and Tyronn Lue with the Cavaliers. That’s pretty good company. The group gets more exclusive when you consider Jackson and Riley had already won championships in other cities prior to winning those championships and you’ll recall Brown, unlike Lue and Nurse, had plenty of head coaching experience in Philly before arriving in Detroit.
Even Nurse’s last season in Toronto wasn’t necessarily one that merited a firing. The Raptors went 41-41 and were nearing a full-blown rebuild as their 2019 NBA Championship roster was in its final stages of being broken up. Not that .500 is anything to write home about but there are plenty of coaches that have survived such seasons and it felt like it was time for a change in The Six and Nurse didn’t have it in him to oversee a rebuild. It’s a change that’s probably better characterized as a mutual parting of ways than a firing.
That’s likely why this season has been so frustrating for Nurse because expectations were heightened and the results have been far worse than last season. His first season as the head coach in Philadelphia was basically a punt year. It was hard to expect more than 47-35 and a playoff berth especially considering Embiid’s knee problems started around last year’s halfway point, culminating on that fateful night in San Francisco. The Sixers wanted to keep their books clean heading into last summer. They then extended Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, gave George a max contract and signed Caleb Martin to a four-year deal while bringing in several other new players on cheaper deals. Yet, the team is in shambles during what was supposed to be a championship contending season.
Often times when these kinds of seasons happen in sports, the coach is the fall guy. We’ve already outlined why that shouldn’t be the case for Nurse and Morey should be the one to go if the Sixers are going to get rid of either man. But I don’t think there’s nothing to lose for Nurse in the season’s final three months either.
A coach is often judged by how well or poorly his team performs relative to expectations. It’s why the Coach of the Year award in every sport rarely goes to the coach who oversees the team with the best record. In most cases, the team with the best record is one of if not the most talented team in its sport and therefore the coach mostly met preseason expectations. Instead, the coach whose team had a big increase in wins from the previous year to the current year ends up being a hotter candidate for the award. Well, expectations have changed massively for the Sixers now and many fans would be fine with the team losing every game for the rest of the season.
I think this goes one of two ways for Nurse as we look ahead to what his status should be in 2025-26. While it hasn’t been the case recently, if the team shows a strong effort level most nights, Nurse will have nothing to worry about heading into next season. A strong effort from whoever is on the court for Nurse in February, March and April would mean he still has the team playing hard for him and his message resonates with most of the roster. It might mean the Sixers send their first-round pick to Oklahoma City, but it would also eliminate any questions about both Nurse and Morey’s security and allow fans to more easily accept that this season was just one-off filled with bad luck.
If the team taps out on Nurse and continues in its losing ways for the rest of the season, particularly in blowout fashion, Nurse is going to enter 2025-26 on the hot seat. One lost season might be tolerable for Josh Harris and the rest of this ownership group. However, the fear of losing a second season as the clock begins to tick on the rest of Embiid’s prime would probably be enough for a coaching change potentially early next season if the season starts the way the current one did.
The losses have piled up for the Sixers recently and they’ve moved up to the seventh spot in the lottery odds now, improving their chances at retaining their top-six protected first rounder. It’s reasonable to root for the losses to continue to up those odds, but it probably comes with a shorter leash for Nurse heading into next season.