Sixers’ Nick Nurse opens up on love of music, Tobias Harris, managing Joel Embiid
New Philadelphia 76ers coach Nick Nurse comes to the City of Brotherly Love looking to carry the success he had with the Toronto Raptors to the Sixers. In his first season in Toronto, Nurse led the Raptors to a championship, and he looks to do the same in Philadelphia.
There are some similarities between the 2018-19 Raptors and the current Sixers. Back then Toronto, like Philadelphia is now, was a talented team, but could never get over the hump in the East.
There is more to Nurse than just basketball, though. Nurse, along with his good friend Max Kerman, sat down with Sixers Wire to discuss music, Tobias Harris, managing Joel Embiid and other topics. Kerman is the lead singer of a band called Arkells, which will be playing a show at TLA in Philly on Sept. 29 and has a new album called “Laundry Pile” coming out on Sept. 21.
The band is friends with Nurse, who has collaborated with it on music, you can see a video of them performing together here. They also raised about $80,000 to open a new basketball court at Hamilton’s Woodlands Park to improve sports in the community.
Editor’s note: This interview has been slightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Nick, I'll start with you. Where does this love of music come from?
Nurse: Well, I think originally it’s just a family thing. My mother’s side of the family very, very musical. I’m the youngest of nine, my mom tried to require everybody to play an instrument growing up. Back in the old days, my oldest brother would play in the high school football game and then he’d grab his French horn and go out and play in the marching band at halftime rather than be in a halftime speech and everybody could play a little bit of something and that’s probably it, and I’m just like everybody else. I started going to concerts, you know? As a teenager and start started getting into it a little bit. My older brothers had a lot of vinyl. In the basement, we’d always be cranking on that when I was really young, too. So just just kind of around it a lot, and I got the bug, that’s for sure.
Q: Nick, I know you played guitar at an Arkells performance. Max, have you taught Nick how to sing at all?
Kerman: He’s got a great voice! Some people either kind of have it or they don’t it’s and as long as you can recognize like, if something’s in tune, or if it’s not then you’re sort of just off to the races and, Nick because he’s screaming on the sidelines all the time, just has this rasp to it. So he sounds like kind of a grizzled country singer. He’s got this Midwest twang. So there’s a lot of things that are sort of appealing about Nick’s voice like immediately and I didn’t have to teach him anything. He kind of picked it up on his own.
Nurse: He’s being very nice there. Very, very nice. He is right about that I got two or three different voices during the year and some of them get really raspy and, obviously in season, raspier. That’s for sure.
Q: Nick, how do you think you did with your guitar performance?
Nurse: I have no idea how I did. I thought during the soundcheck during the day I was like ‘Geez, that was alright. I did OK.’ I could kind of here and see what was going on and felt like I was doing OK, but I was so like, I don’t know what you call it. I was so zoned out or like 17,000 people there and I was scared to death and I was just in another world. I really have no idea how I played on the night, but it sure was fun.
Q: Max, I understand you're a huge basketball fan. From my understanding, your early email address paid homage to the great Vince Carter?
Kerman: Yeah. My name is Max Kerman, but my email address was vince_kerman@hotmail.com. Yeah, no, I mean basketball and baseball were probably my first loves along with music, but yeah, I mean, so I’m born in ‘86. So the Raptors came to town in ‘95 so a very pivotal age for me, and I played basketball growing up on my elementary school team and my high school team, and as an adult, I still play recreationally, but it’s such a nice reprieve for me from music and my job. The first thing my fingers instinctively type is the Reddit NBA page. That’s like the first thing I go to every single morning. I listened to a bunch of different NBA podcasts. That’s like my happy place. So yeah, I love hoops.
Q: You guys obviously have a great relationship. Do you ever bounce ideas off each other for either basketball or music?
Kerman: What’s interesting is, I love talking to Nick because, his job is so much more than the X’s and O’s and it’s really about kind of organizing a team, right? And a band is a team in a lot of ways. So you kind of got to figure out how to get the best out of everybody. You got to figure out like what the direction you want to go and I think that’s my role in our band is just trying to figure out like, what’s the next thing to do? How do I be creative? How do we kind of remain competitive? The music industry is a really competitive place, and so I think Nick and I talk a lot about those things. Right, Nick? Would you say like I think there’s some commonalities there.
Nurse: That’s for sure. We talk a lot about the just overall general, like, getting the most out of out of people, right? I think that’s what we do. Any random people that ever sat in a conversation with me and Max have said to me, that was quite a battle because you kept asking music questions. He kept asking basketball questions. The struggle was real for us and that’s true like he uses basketball to get away. I use music to get away from my real gig, but I think in general, the love for both is there, but the true thing of what I do as a coach/teacher/leader, I guess, is trying to get the most out of everybody and get them to even maybe go places they don’t even think they can go. You know what I mean?
Q: Max, how important are roles from not only a musical standpoint, but a basketball standpoint as well?
Kerman: Again, there’s similarities and our band’s been together since I was 17. I’m 36 right now. We met in university, and that’s longer than like — most bands stay together 3-to-5 years if they’re lucky, but like, we’re in a better place than we’ve ever been, and it’s because I think everybody knows — we’ve sort of figured out what everyone likes to do and what everybody should be doing and those things are aligned. So like, I don’t really care about microphones or gear, but I’m grateful that Mike (DeAngelis) in our band really does care about it and he knows about that stuff. I don’t want to play the drums, but Tim (Oxford) is an amazing drummer, and those guys don’t want to post anything on Instagram, they could care less, but I’m into that. I’ll post about it. So I think it’s similar. It’s like with the starting five or like the closing time five. It’s like is everybody contributing where they need to and I think the chemistry is super important in figuring out how everybody interacts on the team
Q: Now Nick, one guy who hasn't been talked about a lot is Tobias Harris. How do you fit him into your schemes?
Nurse: I kind of believe in roles, too. They’re important, but I always throw a little bit of ‘roles for now’. This is your role now. I think Tobias is a great example. There’s so much more he could possibly do and I kind of want him to settle in and play this role that he’s capable of playing that he’s got experience playing, but I do kind of want him to dream outside that role or expand outside that role eventually. I do keep a pretty loose lid on the roles if that makes any sense because I think there is guys — there’s some guys maybe they never shot 3-pointer before and they’re not bad and we may need them to shoot more 3s or, or whatever it is. Paul Reed would be a good example for us for that. When we got James and Joel out there, there’s gonna be some open 3s. So let’s start to open up their minds a little bit and let’s get working on it, and let’s see what happens. Things like that.
Q: Paul Reed mentioned something called the "Nurse's Pill". What exactly is that?
Nurse: That’s more for kind of the basics of shooting. We use it for a lot of our kids’ camps. In fact, we just did a big camp for about 110 kids the other day, and it’s really a visual learning aid for kids to learn how to shoot quickly, right? We’re just always trying to find a better, faster, quicker way that they can comprehend the knowledge and get better quicker. Yeah, I mean, listen about day two after I had the job, we went in the gym with Paul Reed, and we just tried to start making a couple mechanical adjustments on his shooting form to see if he couldn’t shoot it a little better. It’s really been going good. I think he’s gonna have a good, good season.
Q: The NBA has a new resting policy that encourages teams to play their star players. Max, as a basketball fan, how do you feel about it?
Kerman: Yeah, the first thing I thought it was like ‘Man, Adam Silver’s got a hard job’ because he’s contending with these athletes that are millionaires and have so much power over the game, but he’s also wanting to make sure that the product is really good and the fans are being served and that the organizations are being served. So even coming up with the concept and getting people to buy into it, I kind of think of like how that would have came to be, but ultimately I think it’s smart. You want your stars to show up. It’s a competition, but it’s also entertainment. That’s the funny thing about what the NBA is. It’s like on one hand, it is like super serious, and there’s so much emotion involved and everyone is trying so hard, but the other hand, it’s just entertainment. Like we’re paying money to be entertained, and so you want the stars to show up because without that, then there’s no infrastructure, there’s no business model. So I’m happy that they’ve come up with something because I would have been scratching my head as to how to figure that out.
Q: Nick, as a basketball coach, how do you manage Embiid now when considering the resting policy?
Nurse: I think that we are looking at it maybe a little different than people think we might be. We’re trying to get him to play more games. Our goal is that it’s going up for him, not not the other direction, and some people would say, ‘Oh, that’s playoffs. Is he going to be?’ We’re just trying to get it going the other direction. I think that’s just what our people believe here that he can play and again, knock on wood, cross our fingers, all that stuff. There’s always things that can come up with that stuff, but I don’t know. I believe in the guys playing as much as they can and let’s see what happens.
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Q: Max, now Nick is always talking about this "playoff toolbox". What's your reaction whenever he pulls out a crazy scheme?
Nurse: It’s the best! I think if you care about your craft, you want to have a bunch of tricks up your sleeve. I think about — I saw (Bruce) Springsteen and I was like ‘This guy depending on like, who, what fan in the audience is holding up a sign or what the movement in the air was,’ he had 40 years worth of tricks up the sleeve that he could go do and that’s what I kind of aspire to do as a musician too. We played this college show in Canada and I was like, ‘Oh, these are a bunch of 17-year-olds who don’t know our tunes. OK, how are you going to impress them? How are we going to put on an amazing show? OK, let’s cover Taylor Swift. OK, let’s bring a fan up on stage. Let’s do it.’ So I think the principle is the same. It’s just you want to be prepared for any occasion. So when Nick is pulling something out that is unexpected, I think it’s it’s a sign that he’s a master of his craft because he’s like, ‘This is not where people thought I was gonna go, but this is going to be effective’ and that just comes with preparation and experience. I think.
Q: Now Nick, you started pulling out some of those crazy schemes in the summer league. Is that what Sixers fans should expect this season?
Nurse: The funny thing about all that stuff is, almost always it comes to me on the spur of the moment as to what’s needed right now. Like, we need to do this for whatever reason. Full court press like, I don’t know, there’s a whole list of things I can tell you why we needed to do it, but it just feels like the right time to do it, and yeah, and we usually get some success out of them. If we do we do, we do put it in our playoff toolbox. If it doesn’t work, whatever funky thing we try, we crumple it up real quick and throw it in the throat in the waste bin and don’t revisit it, but we got to try a bunch of stuff to see what we can come up with.
Q: Nick, what are you looking for from Tyrese Maxey on both ends of the floor?
Nurse: Yeah, we’ll start on the defensive. I think he’s been blessed with all that speed and quickness and I think we need to figure out a way for him to use it for a little bit more of disruptive situations. I think he’s so fast that he can go get the ball a little bit more, right? And disrupt the guy he’s guarding or get in passing lanes or whatever, and offensively, he just needs, to me, he’s awesome again with his speed. His shooting has really gotten good from deep. I want him to create more for others. I want him to see a little bit more of the floor and see where his teammates are, and eventually, when he’s scoring so much that they’re going to start sending multiple bodies at him, I want to be able to see who’s open.
Q: You obviously coached Kyle Lowry in Toronto. Do you see any similarities between the two point guards?
Nurse: There’s some similarities. Obviously, they both have the ball in their hands a little bit. I think they’re both fearless drivers to the rim. I think Tyrese has so much more athleticism. just speed and quickness, but Kyle just has so much will. He’ll just bully his way in there like a bowling ball, knock people over, and figure out how to get in where Tyrese is just gonna blow by you and flip it up there and score, but probably the biggest similarity is they both love the game like crazy and they both work like nobody. Like Kyle’s amazing how much work he puts into his craft.
Q: Max, you being a Raptors fan, do you see similarities between Maxey and Lowry?
Kerman: I love Tyrese actually. There’s a lot of guys who are good on other team that you hate, but he’s a hard guy to hate. He plays with a lot of joy, and he seems like just kind of well-liked and respected from his opponents. Any time a guy’s 6-foot and he’s in the league, like they’re just built differently. Like you have to be a psychopath to think that you can contend with these guys that are like 6-foot-9. So yeah, they have that in common for sure. This is like ‘I don’t care! I’m 6-foot? I’m gonna go at you. It doesn’t matter.’
Q: Nick, PJ Tucker is a guy who does a lot for a team. How does he fit into the game plan?
Nurse: I coached him in Toronto. I loved him when we had him there. He is really a I mean, he’s a specialist. He really is and that specialist is like he’s one of the toughest dudes in the league. There isn’t a whole lot of guys that like hang their hat on just being really tough. He’s a veteran and he’s smart and he guards and he also, he’ll hurt you with that corner 3. Like that’s the thing that I want to see him get back to is parking in that corner and pulling that trigger fearlessly time after time because he‘s had some great seasons doing that.
Q: Max, what are your memories of PJ Tucker when he was in Toronto?
Kerman: We could’ve used him last year on the team. We needed some veteran experience on the Raptors last year. Like high basketball IQ, and I know PJ Tucker’s got that so it feels like the good playoff teams, and we know this from our 2019 Raptors team, is like they got a bunch of veterans that are super smart, that aren’t going to screw up the defensive rotations, that are going to make the right pass, that know their place on the team, that are going to (expletive) and whine if they’re not getting playing time. You know what I mean? You need guys that are kind of a little over it. I find that a lot of dudes that are over 31, 32 that have been in the league and kind of get it. Those are the guys you want on your team for a playoff run.
Q: Max, what was your reaction when Nick and the Raptors took home the title in 2019?
Kerman: Oh my God. It was the most exhausting three-month journey of my life. For all my friends that are diehard Raptors fans, it was crazy. It’s just like, you get to the first round, the second round, and like every night it was excruciating and exciting. And yeah, I watched the game where we won it all with my dad and my dad’s a basketball fan too. So it’s cool to share that with him because grew up in New York City and he loves basketball. Yeah, you know, for Toronto sports fans, I mean, the last great moment we would have had was 1993 against a little team called the Philadelphia Phillies? (He chuckles).
Thank you both for taking time out of your day to do this.
Nurse and Kerman: No problem!
