Nick Nurse

“I'm getting older and mellower in my old age.”

“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?”

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

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

“I place a lot of value on pace of the game, going after people... always be the aggressor and forcing the issue a little bit when we have the ball, and when we don't have it, we want to come at you, too.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I like to play aggressive, in general.”

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

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

“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 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 used to say, as an assistant, I would go in and close my door for three hours after practice and just watch film. Now it seems like I'm in a meeting and then another and then another for three hours that have nothing to do with basketball. It's just different.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”