The NBA has announced that Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse is one of the three finalists for its annual Coach of the Year award.
Joining Nurse as finalists for the 2019-20 Red Auerbach trophy are Oklahoma City’s Billy Donovan and Milwaukee’s Mike Budenholzer.
Nurse has been considered a front-runner for the award for some time, based on the excellent job he’s done leading the post-Kawhi Leonard Raptors to a 46-18 record (pre-Bubble — Bubble statistics and records aren’t taken into consideration for this year’s awards). That record is well above expectations for a team that lost the Finals MVP and its starting shooting guard, and that, combined with Nurse’s constantly shifting defensive schemes and equal-opportunity offense, should be enough to land him the award, at least in our opinion!