Nick Nurse crushed for taking timeout to stop Raptors’ run

June 10, 2019

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Nick Nurse is being crushed for calling an oddly-timed timeout at the end of Game 5 that seemed to kill the Toronto Raptors’ momentum against the Golden State Warriors on Monday night.

The Raptors were leading 103-97 after Kawhi Leonard had scored 10 straight points to give them the lead. Leonard had made four straight shots, the Warriors had missed two in a row, and the Raptors had all the momentum but decided to halt their run by calling a timeout with 3:05 left. It was bizarre considering the team that’s seeing the game slip away usually calls the timeout, not the other way around.

After the timeout, the Warriors outscored the Raptors 9-2 to win the game 106-105.

Numerous media members expressed surprise over the timeout call by Nurse.

Raptors were absolutely rolling & GSW had only 1 timeout & so they couldn’t stop the run.

Then Nick Nurse called a timeout to stop his own run, and the game has totally flipped.

— nick wright (@getnickwright) June 11, 2019

So easy to say in hindsight. But Nick Nursevmight’ve called the worst time out in NBA history.

— Dan Bickley (@danbickley) June 11, 2019

Nick Nurse with arguably the worst timeout call in NBA Finals history

— Grant Napear (@GrantNapearshow) June 11, 2019

playing devils advocate a bit. don't like that timeout by Nurse. Kawhi is hot. Warriors look tired. why give them time to gather themselves and get their composure back?

— Sanjay Kirpalani (@SanjayKirpalani) June 11, 2019

The Raptors coach shared his reasoning in his postgame press conference. He said they lose the timeouts after the 3-minute mark, so he figured he would use both before they were gone to give his players extra rest.