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Almost 30 years ago, Nick Nurse sat in the bar at Moorways Sports Centre in Derby and toasted his first win as coach of a professional basketball team.

Now, in his first season as head coach of the Toronto Raptors, he is a series win away from leading his team to the NBA finals.

It may not have been a startlingly rapid rise to the top but it is, all the same, an astonishing one. Very few get the chance to coach a team in the NBA – even fewer without having had the experience of playing in what is the best basketball league in the world.

Nurse has done it the hard way – in Europe and in the NBA feeder system, the G League – before becoming an assistant under Dwayne Casey at Toronto in 2013. When Casey was fired at the end of last season, Nurse was given the job.

After seeing off Orlando Magic and coming through a tough seven-game series with the Philadelphia 76ers, Nurse’s Raptors face the extraordinary Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in the first game of another best of seven on Friday for the right to take on defending double champions Golden State Warriors or Portland Trailblazers in the NBA finals.

(Image: Getty Images)

That is a long, long way from that Midland Cup win against Leicester City Riders at Moorways almost three decades ago.

Nurse arrived in Derby in 1990 at the age of 22, fresh from playing at the University of Northern Iowa.

The Derby Rams, as they were then, were still struggling to establish themselves in the British Basketball League and were yet to have a winning season.

They were a club forever operating on the tightest of budgets and Nurse was just what they were looking for. Not only was he deadly keen to grow his reputation as a coach, he could play point guard too.

Two for the price of one.

But for a young man a long way from home, it was a gamble from both sides.

(Image: Derby Telegraph picture from archive)

“He was definitely younger than most of the players but he soon gained people’s respect,” recalled shooting guard Tim Lascelles.

“He had to learn really quickly but he did that. Nick was good with the players and very hard-working. He told you what he wanted and if he had something to say to you, he would say it.”

“He looked about 18,” added Martin Ford, who was the team’s centre and designated driver of the minibus for away matches.

“But I don’t think that was a problem to anybody because we were all aware that Americans’ knowledge of basketball was so much greater than ours and so we thought he could teach us new stuff so that we would progress.

“Nick had our respect from the start and that was because of his approach. If we did sprints in training, Nick was always first and when we did shooting drills, he had to be the best.

“He was never the sergeant major type of coach. His style was always do as I do, not do as I say.”

(Image: NBAE/Getty Images)

Two other senior players in Nurse’s Derby team that season were Terry Manghum, an experienced power forward and consummate team man, and the mercurial American guard Ernest Lee.

When he was in the mood, Lee was capable of picking apart any defence in the league but his off-court habits made him a challenge for any coach, let alone a rookie.

“Ernest was not the easiest of people to manage,” said Lascelles. “He gave the impression playing over here was very much beneath him but Nick got the best out of him.

“He could see that Ernest was undisciplined but he was a great scorer, so he let him know what he expected from him during the games and got the ball to him so that Ernest could do what he did best.

“I’m sure managing all those egos in the NBA is never easy yet Nick always believed in his ability to coach and he learned how to manage winning teams. I think he started that learning process at Derby.”

“Apart from anything else, Nick was a very good player and was fiercely competitive,” added Ford. “That guard combination with Ernest was one of the most potent Derby have had.

(Image: NBAE/Getty Images)

“I don’t remember any serious fall-outs at all that year. We were a very unselfish team. Nick got us all moving in the same direction.”

Derby had their first taste of relative success under Nurse. They finished the league season with a 12-12 record and reached the play-offs for the first time but he did not come back for a second season.

Impressed by what they heard of Nurse’s year in England, Grand View University in Iowa appointed him their new head coach, making him the youngest college head coach in the USA.

Lascelles and Ford have both stayed in touch with their former coach and are delighted by his success. It has been a long and difficult route to the top.

“I would be a liar if I said I was not surprised he made it because so few people get these posts and to have got there by taking the route he has taken is an amazing story,” said Lascelles.

“I sent him an email saying congratulations when he got the head coach job at Toronto and he replied almost straight away,” said Ford.

“He has still got his feet on the ground, just the same as he had when he arrived in Derby 29 years ago. Even though he has had all this success, he is still the same Nick Nurse.”