‘We’re seeing a lot of peaks and valleys’: Nurse on Scottie Barnes

Toronto Raptors head coach Nick Nurse is seeing the full gamut of Scottie Barnes’s rookie game — often all on the same night. Nurse spoke about Barnes’s talents and inconsistencies after the Raptors’ loss to the Memphis Grizzlies.

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Video Transcript

- Thanks, everybody. [INAUDIBLE] questions in the room with Coach Nurse.

- [INAUDIBLE] the first half offense [INAUDIBLE] you kind of got yourself in a [INAUDIBLE] bad shot selection? Bad shot taking? [INAUDIBLE]

NICK NURSE: Yeah, they really packed it in on us, Doug. Right? They just stayed off of everybody that wasn't a whole lot of space and kind of baited us into some early shots. And we kind of kept taking them one after another and didn't make many. Kind of started that stagnant non-scoring part of it. Yeah, that's for sure.

- Again, [INAUDIBLE] about Gary. Cameron needs somebody to make some of those plays. You keep talking about [INAUDIBLE]. And again tonight you get closer. You couldn't rattle off six or seven straight scores.

NICK NURSE: Yeah, I think, again, I think the game was fairly even. At one point, Doug, and we had, I think, 3 fast break opportunities. [INAUDIBLE] to cut down the lane. Scottie got out one-on-one, got a shot blocked. And then Pascal got out on one-on-one as well and got a shot blocked. So it was three chances I thought with the game there. And they went down. And it's weird how that happens when you miss a layup at one end it oftentimes results in one at the other end. And all of a sudden, you look up and felt like we were getting stops and getting out. And the scoreboard was going the wrong direction.

- In the first half of [INAUDIBLE] the second half [INAUDIBLE] it started. [INAUDIBLE] the most extreme [INAUDIBLE] of that end for performance?

NICK NURSE: I think from just limited his touches for sure. I thought they did a good job of that. Dylan decided to take that on. And he's physical. And he works hard, obviously, takes pride in that. It was made things tough on Freddie. That's for sure.

- What do you make of Scottie's game? He had some good moments and knocked down a bunch more [INAUDIBLE].

NICK NURSE: Yeah, listen, I think we're seeing a lot of peaks and valleys all within the same game, almost every game now. Right? You look down at the first 10 minutes of the game. He's like a minus 20. Right? And then he ends up. So he plays the rest of the game a plus whatever 9 or maybe as minus 22. So he played the rest of the game plus 11. So that's pretty extreme peaks and valleys. That's what I'm noticing.

- A couple of the plays in transition. One of them was looking back at Steven Adams. One of them was like a no-look, nonchalant foul. Did you have to talk to him about plays like that in terms of rookie learning lessons, moments, anything like that?

NICK NURSE: Well, at least he scored it, right? At least he scored it. I would-- I guess I wouldn't care if they bounce it off the top of their head as long as it goes in, Josh, right? But if it doesn't go in, then we're probably talking about a whole other situation.

- [INAUDIBLE]

NICK NURSE: I actually used to do that by the way. Didn't [INAUDIBLE] used to have that when he played horse, bounce off the head [INAUDIBLE]?

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

- Are the shots going to the right guys in the offense [INAUDIBLE]? Are you getting [INAUDIBLE] plays in the number of shots made?

NICK NURSE: Well, I mean, it's hard to-- I think we're-- our primary guys, obviously, are Pascal and Fred. I mean, you look down at the sheet and you're saying, well, our top three guy. Scottie is probably our next option there.

And they end up with the most shots, Doug. So I think-- yeah, I don't know. And all those guys get some cracks. Again, I thought there were stretches there offensively where those guys played pretty well. Just the first half, the first quarter in particular, it was really sticky. And from the last few minutes of the first half and the second half, it wasn't too bad as far as who was taking the shots, yeah.

- Do you expect from particular guys [INAUDIBLE] do you expect more teams to really go [INAUDIBLE] the way Memphis did? Or, do they just have [INAUDIBLE]?

NICK NURSE: Well, I mean, I don't know. Michael, I think that your choice always is to say if we play solid defense, can the complementary guys beat us rather than open up the floor for them? Again, we had a high number of 3's and some high volume.

Again, there's no-- there's a couple of guys that got a good number of attempts up because of some of the attention they were paying to the other guys. And if they make a few more of those, we're feeling a little different, and we're reading things really well. But when they don't go in, you're not doing very much well on offense.

- Teams didn't used to guard guards like that? I mean, watching Memphis guard [INAUDIBLE] like that, do you see shades of how you guarded Steph in the finals there?

NICK NURSE: Yeah, I mean, we've tried to limit guys' touches and things like that a lot. I wouldn't say just that situation. There's lots of situations where we try to limit touches and make things difficult on certain players, yeah.

- Were you happier with what you saw from Chris today?

NICK NURSE: Yeah, Chris did OK today. Yeah, he did a couple of nice drives to the rim. He did OK. He put a couple in.

- Thank you very much, everybody.

- [INAUDIBLE]

- Yep, see ya.