The Scotiabank Arena gave off nothing like the nostalgic feeling Nick Nurse—their former coach—would have expected as he and his Sixers team suffered a second loss on the spin. It was another woeful display that extended their pathetic record to 22-43 as the curtains of the regular season slowly got drawn.
In a game between two injury-plagued teams, the Toronto Raptors proved to be more resolute, seeing off the visiting Sixers with a 118-105 victory. It was the third time the two sides had locked horns this season, and Nick Nurse recorded all losses in his clash against his former side.
The Sixers’ injury excuses were rendered unsubstantial as they failed to turn up against a Raptors team that was without Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barett, Brandon Ingram, and a few others.
Nurse’s men were largely unproductive, as they could only make 20 points of the 22 turnovers they forced – an unfortunate sequence Nurse felt was the major difference between the two sides.
“That really is the difference, considering that we did turn them over quite a bit, and I didn’t think our transition offense out of turnovers was near good enough tonight either,” Nurse said.
“Only 20 points out of 22 turnovers, right? So I’d say those two things offensively were the big problems.”
Like that wasn’t enough, the Sixers were only able to manage seven triples out of 35 attempts, while their opponent knocked down 16 out of 40 tries.
“Again, I thought after the first quarter, I thought we were doing a decent job of getting the ball out to open shooters, and we went a long time without hitting any, and then we kind of hit three in a row there, but three in a row and ended with seven for the game is, there’s a lot of dry spells in there from 3.”
To worsen the situation, the Sixers compounded their offensive futility with some costly defensive mistakes that further wrecked their sinking ship. Of course, these were not to be overlooked by the frustrated Nick Nurse.
“Just again, at the half, I showed some clips, and they were just mistakes by our guys going under the wrong guys for one thing,” Nurse complained.
“Just not keeping track of the wrong guys there for another, a couple out of offensive rebounding situations, kind of getting a little bit of everything, and that’s how it adds up to be a bad number.”
Nurse couldn’t help but affirm the unpredictability of his future when asked about how he felt about his visits to the Scotiabank Arena as an opposition manager,
“I guess I’m getting used to it. I’m done [coming to Toronto] for this year. We’ll see what happens next year,” Nurse said in a question asked by Offside. “
Nurse’s statement was ambiguous and touched on many spectrums. His current contract runs until 2027-2028, but even the least concerned Sixers fan knows Nurse is vulnerable to job insecurity after this season.
Nonetheless, the game didn’t lack its positives. With the loss, the Sixers now move ahead of the Raptors in the lottery standings and own the tiebreaker in terms of the reverse standings in the race to the bottom. Also, Jeff Dowtin Jr. was a standout performer, as he hit a career-high 20 points against the Raptors.
It was a long-coming performance for the point guard who had shown glimpses of his scoring potential in the G League. For Nick and the Sixers, all eyes are on next season. But while Nurse’s future remains uncertain, the Sixers hope to rewrite the narrative from the lackluster season they’re having to a more encouraging one next term.
