Nick Nurse's New Raptors Contract Will Be Addressed 'In Due Time,' GM Says

The Toronto Raptors aren't in a hurry just yet to extend the contract of head coach Nick Nurse.

"Obviously, timeline's a little different this year," Raptors general manager Bobby Webster said to reporters on Thursday, per The Athletic's Blake Murphy.

Webster added that an extension is something the team will "address in due time."

Nurse took over in June 2018, with ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reporting at the time he had signed a three-year deal. That keeps him under contract for one more season.

Because he's set to remain on the sidelines for 2020-21, the Raptors can wait a bit longer before turning their focus toward Nurse's situation. It may not be a priority at the moment given both the NBA's upcoming restart and the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the time comes, one would expect Toronto to do everything necessary to keep Nurse around.

His hiring looked like a bit of a risk at the time.

Winning Coach of the Year and guiding the Raptors to 59 victories wasn't enough for Dwane Casey to keep his job, and the franchise was turning to somebody with no NBA head coaching experience. The subsequent acquisition of Kawhi Leonard showed how the front office had Finals ambitions after years of falling short in the playoffs.

Nurse proceeded to guide Toronto to its first NBA championship. Among his biggest successes, he managed Leonard's workload perfectly to keep the four-time All-Star happy and at his peak for the postseason, and he wasn't afraid to deploy a somewhat rudimentary approach to neutralize Stephen Curry in the 2019 Finals.

Nurse might be doing even better work now, with the Raptors sitting second in the Eastern Conference (46-18) after having lost Leonard and Danny Green in the offseason. The team's defensive rating (104.9) is second only to the Milwaukee Bucks, per NBA.com—a surprising development given how good Leonard and Green are at defending the perimeter.

Nurse is getting the most out of the talent at his disposal, providing team officials with every reason to believe he's the right coach to guide Toronto in the seasons ahead.