[Stein] Sixers insist to me that they were prepared to support Nick Nurse if he wanted to continue coaching Canadas national team. Nurse stunningly stepped down from the post relinquishing one of his dreams to coach in the Olympics to focus on his new job & settling his family in Philadelphia

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🏀 The Sixers insist to me that they were prepared to support Nick Nurse if he wanted to continue coaching Canada’s national team. Nurse stunningly stepped down this from the post — relinquishing one of his dreams to coach in the Olympics — to focus on his new job and settling his family in Philadelphia. In a statement released Wednesday, Nurse said the “difficult decision to step down” was his and that he helped Canada Basketball with its search to find Kings associate head coach Jordi Fernandez to take over as his replacement. It will be interesting to see if Nurse’s exit so close to this summer’s World Cup will have any effect on the roster. As recently as June 12 in a podcast appearance with my former ESPN teammate Brian Windhorst, Nurse spoke of his excitement to try to steer Canada to its first Olympic berth in basketball since Steve Nash starred in the Sydney Games in 2000 and the prospect of coaching both Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jamal Murray alongside Lu Dort, Dwight Powell and Kelly Olynyk. “As far as Canada goes, we’ve had a lot of consistency … we’ve stayed together throughout this whole three-year run,” Nurse said on the Hoop Collective podcast. (H/T to our FIBA-loving pal Charlie Saturday for his help with the Nurse quotes.)