Quotes from Nick Nurse

I said it when I got hired. I said, for five years, I had a 1,000 people telling me I was going to be a head coach in the NBA. And when I got the job, those same 1,000 people were shocked.

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 think there's always enough right in front of me worrying about who's playing the minutes tomorrow, but you've always got to have an eye on a year or two from now and what those guys will do if you think, 'Well, let's give them a full year at the 905 and see how they progress.'

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.

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

My goal early in becoming a head coach so young was to find out if I could do it. I just wanted to see if I could be a good head coach and then start learning from head coaching.

I tried to convince those guys at the Bullets in the '95-'96 season that they could try to beat the mighty London Towers, who won everything the year before. I got out of bed every day with the mindset of getting the team to Wembley for the play-off final and to win the championship.

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

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 believe in getting the ball up the floor and trying to take advantage of transition opportunities.

They do not eat Yorkshire pudding on Sunday in Iowa.

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 was in love with the triangle because it was so different to what everybody was doing in the NBA. Everybody else was dribbling down, throwing it into the low post, and then their guy would go to work. To me, it was boring.

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.

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.

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.

I think it's really important that we get an experienced staff. Guys that have been a head coach, to me, at some level is important to me. I value head coaching just because it's good to know what it's like to be the decision maker.

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

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

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

It's such a long season, right? It's certainly serious business, but it's no sense that we all have to be miserable doing it.

I understand there are bumps in the road. I understand there's a lot of noise that I don't want to listen to, and I just try to do my job to the best of my ability.

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