Ceiling/Floor: Philadelphia 76ers Hire Nick Nurse

Welcome to Ceiling/Floor where I dissect trades, signings, firings and hirings in order to determine the best case and worst case scenarios.

BREAKING: The 76ers are hiring Nick Nurse as their next HC, per @wojespn pic.twitter.com/KrHiIZ2EwM

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 29, 2023

The Philadelphia 76ers have hired Nick Nurse as their new head coach.

Ceiling

I should start by saying this Doc Rivers shit never stood a chance. Doc won a ring in 2008 when the league was an entirely different playing style and he mainly won thanks to his assistant Tom Thibodeau and his defensive coaching and because, well, Kevin Garnett was going to win that ring no matter what.

Since then, his resume is littered with the most embarrassing playoff collapses in NBA history and drama on every team he watched over so it never made any sense for Philadelphia to hire the messiest coach when Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons were a ticking time bomb of messiness.

Anyway, Nick Nurse is also an NBA champion but like, in the modern era. He also won a ring with Sixers GM, Daryl Morey, back in 2013 when Nurse was coaching the Houston Rockets G-League team so the two men have some version of a healthy relationship already which is crucial for an organization these days.

This Sixers team needs the strong high school guidance counselor vibes Nick Nurse provides.

But to be honest, I think this hiring isn’t about winning it all next season. With James Harden most likely heading back to the Houston Rockets to wingman for Ime Udoka, I think Daryl Morey and this Sixers organization are planning to reset the team.

They’re going to rebuild around Joel Embiid but this team can’t do shit until they get Tobias Harris off the books. The 2023-24 season is going to be a zombie year for Philadelphia while they clean up their salary cap in order to make massive moves in the summer of 2024. That’s why it’s so important that Morey and Nurse have that history and are on the same page about what the expectations are for this team.

Floor

The entire trade deadline was flooded with Toronto Raptors players and all of the first-round picks they were demanding for guys like Fred VanVleet and OG Anunoby and Paskal Siakiam but for a roster so loaded with guys who were worth multiple first-round picks, they sure did fucking stink at basketball this year and miss the playoffs entirely.

Perhaps Nick Nurse isn’t the greatest coach in the world and won a title in 2918 because Kawhi Leonard was going to win a title. The same way Doc won that title in 2008 thanks to Garnett.

The job of an NBA head coach isn’t exclusively boiled down to having the best schematics and x’s and o’s. You can be a basketball savant but if you aren’t capable of relaying the message to your players and getting them to buy into what you’re telling them to do then it’s all for naught.

I think the Raptors players wore sick of Nurse’s shit and wildly underperformed this past year. On the sidelines, Nurse gives off some real frantic personal injury attorney vibes. Like, he shows up 25 minutes late visibly sweating through his incorrectly buttoned shirt with an excuse he’s so obviously making up as he goes.

Perhaps a new environment will make his message more clear in a new locker room but some guys simply cannot rally the troops and have you seen the Sixers in the playoffs? They are in desperate need of a guy who can rally the troops when the games matter the most and everyone plays hot potato with the ball because they are terrified of once again losing to Al Horford.

We are only, let’s say 300 days away from Joel Embiid stinking it up in an elimination game again and throwing Nick Nurse under the bus. I cannot wait.