Top 60 Nick Nurse Quotes

I’m a guy that, when there’s something rolling out there, the predetermined rotations might go right in the garbage can.

I’m gonna back my players.

Obviously, things evolve; teams see you play a little bit and start try to do things, and the one thing that’ll happen is if one team has success in something, you can bet the next three teams are doing some similar things, too.

When I started coaching, I wanted to find out quickly if I could do it.

I worked at chemistry and developing a style of play on both sides of the ball and studied success and winning.

That’s your worry as a head coach: Are you going to go in there, give them everything you’ve got, and are they going to respond?

Chemistry kind of builds all season. It’s not like we say, ‘OK, it’s game one, and now we’ve got our chemistry.’ I think it shifts and moves all season long.

It shouldn’t be two separate styles between the first and second unit as much.

As an assistant, you are grinding it out and churning out work like there are not enough hours in the day, really. As a head coach, you are doing similar.

We’ve gotta be trying to think of what’s coming next before it comes next.

In a game, I’m locked in. I maybe notice three rows in the stands the arena over, and that’s it.

I think I’m always a little bit under construction. I’m a project that I’m trying to improve upon.

I started at Grand View and all the England stuff. I just wanted to learn and get better, and that’s kind of what the experiences were.

People talk about offensive chemistry all the time, but defensive chemistry is something you have to build, too, and there’s a lot of that work to be done with just communications and the feel of who certain guys play.

It’s pretty draining, the amount of games I watch on a daily basis. It’s pretty much non-stop.

Sometimes I’m in that timeout, and I say, ‘Let’s go a possession of zone,’ and they’re like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’ and that shows that they’re confident enough to roll with whatever we’re doing. And sometimes they’re like, ‘No, no, no, no.’ They don’t want a possession to get away from them, possibly.

One of my favorite things about the D-League was going on the road and losing and not having to talk to anyone after the game.

We are trying to get away from those traditional centre, power forward type things.

I think switching is like a lot of things. You can do it – it’s a game plan – but you better do it well. You better practise it.

I always say we’re chasing perfection in an imperfect game.

Predictability can eventually be defended.

It’s really an organizational job with a football team to watch them go through their day.

I’m getting older and mellower in my old age.

Hindsight is, of course, 20/20. Any time you go back, and you look at something, and now you’ve got the result of something, you say, ‘Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the right idea.’

Why are people afraid to try something different? Because of the scrutiny they’re going to receive if it doesn’t work. That stops people from trying things different a lot.

I read a couple books on democratic coaching.

Football is a pretty complex numbering system most of the time: run the three back through the four hole, things like that. We kind of do the same thing – the three man sets for the four, or whatever.

I’ve had a lot of really good preparation. I’ve coached a lot of games around the world.

We’ve got to be innovative. We’ve got to think about what’s coming next.

At some point in your life, you try to self-reflect and ask yourself, ‘Why do I want to win so bad?’

We want to always play with pace on offence.

For every philosophical idea about how we’re going to do things, there has to be a plan to get there, and we have to be able to execute it, first in practice and then in games.

I just think there are so many more good, talented players.

I want to see given extra effort, pulling for your teammates: those are the kinds of things we’re shooting for and we’re going for because that’s what we need.

I didn’t think reaching the NBA was a possibility when I coached Derby in 1990. I was right out of college when I went there and was more concerned about playing a bit and getting that out of my system.

I was getting a degree in accounting, and I was going to go off and account. And as it worked out, I haven’t accounted for anything since.

An entrepreneur will do whatever they have to do to make sure things get done. Our coaches will be that way; our players will be that way. Just do what it takes.

Try to put our guys in different positions, try some different combinations, et cetera, to prepare us for the playoffs, which is what matters.

Esthetically, let’s move the ball. Let’s guard people. Let’s fight.

When I came back to England after my stint with Derby in 1995, I really wanted more time to study coaching.

I like to play aggressive, in general.

Phil Handy played for me in England and has obviously risen to stardom in his area of what he does.

It’s about what the players are doing. My job is facilitate that. My job is to put them in positions to succeed. My job is to listen to their ideas, take them if they’re good, quietly push them to the side if they’re not. My job is to help them grow.

I think if you’re going to be a little bit innovative or risk-taking, sometimes you’re going to be wrong, and it’s going to look bad. I understand that.

I love jazz and blues, where there’s a structure, but a lot of the cool stuff is veering off the page and playing.

I loved every job I had.

My job is to coach the team and get them to try to play the best they can come April, May, and June.

I’ve known Adrian Griffin for quite awhile now and always had him as my ‘when I get a job, I want to hire him if he isn’t already a head coach and I can get him’ list.

I think the game in general is changing so fast right before our eyes.

Don’t let people take you ahead of where you are at.

You look at any roster and you say, ‘Geez, he’s pretty good. He’s pretty good. He’s talented. He comes off the bench?’ All of a sudden, it’s, ‘Geez, that’s a pretty good roster they got right there.’

I like to have an attacking style on both ends.

I know the ‘big spending club v. smaller club’ theme is popular in the Premier League. I don’t think about it – we are 30 teams trying to win the championship, and you do what you need to do.

If you ask what my philosophy is, my philosophy is kind of like an entrepreneurial philosophy.

I think a lot of personnel decisions come down to who’s the best player today, like if we had to throw ’em in a game today versus what could their upside be 18 months from now. A lot of times, those are two different answers. That’s the difficulty of player personnel.

I still say, to this day, I could not guard Nigel Lloyd.

I’ve coached a lot of teams and moved up gradually and tried to succeed and tried to have success at every level. When that happens, you just continue to wonder if you can keep doing it one more level.

I don’t think when I decided I didn’t want to be an accountant any more that I was necessarily saying I wanted to be an NBA head coach. I just really wanted to figure out if I could do it.

I think I jumped the gun a bit on head coaching. I got named a head coach at 23, and I really didn’t know what I was doing. I remember getting that job and going, ‘Oh my God, they gave me the job.’

That’s playoff basketball. Can you not get too happy after a win? Can you understand how determined the team is going to be after a loss and bring the energy you need to bring?