The Toronto Raptors have elevated assistant coach Nick Nurse to the top job as Dwane Casey’s replacement.According to an ESPN.com report, the Raptors are finalizing details to name Nick Nurse as the ninth coach in franchise history.The 50-year-old Nurse has been with the Raptors coaching staff since 2013, and was most recently charged with reinvigorating the team’s offence which ranked in the top five last season.It is the first new coach hire of team president Masai Ujiri’s tenure and came about after he fired Casey in early May.Casey was named Monday as the head coach of the Detroit Pistons.Nurse, an Iowa native, is a lifetime coach who has worked in myriad organizations. He was a two-time coach of the year in the British Basketball League and was involved with the British national team program. Before landing in Toronto, Nurse spent six seasons in the NBA G League with Rio Grande and Iowa, winning the coach of the year award in 2010-11 and a title in 2012-13. Nurse has also coached for 12 years across Europe.He got his start in coaching as a student assistant at the University of Northern Iowa in 1989 after finishing his playing career there as a guard. Nurse was seen as an NBA assistant coach likely to take over one of the nine head coaching vacancies in the league this off-season. Toronto was the last of those nine clubs to hire a new coach.The Raptors were reportedly interested in hiring Mike Budenholzer after he left the Atlanta Hawks at the end of last season. But Budenholzer took the Milwaukee Bucks job.San Antonio Spurs assistant Ettore Messina, a coaching legend in Europe, was reportedly also the other finalist for the Raptors job.Other candidates believed to be interviewed by the Raptors included Toronto assistant Rex Kalamian and Lithuanian coach Sarunas Jasikevicius. Jerry Stackhouse, the Raptors905 coach for the last two seasons, was hired over the weekend to be an assistant with Memphis.Casey, 61, posted a 320-238 (.573) overall ...
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