The morning of October 19th, the X user @zosiaismad uncovered a burner-style account under the username @Leonards1347 that not only seemed to be created for the sole purpose of defending Nurse, but switched its tweet bias from the Raptors to the 76ers. While it is not clear what the date stamps are on those tweets, as the account has since been deleted, it is notable that Nurse signed his contract with the Philadelphia 76ers on June 1st, a little less than 5 months ago.
Only screenshots I’ve found:
The 2nd tweet according to The Waraich Report on youtube was a reply on this thread below, after someone commented that Nick Nurse would never do this:
The funniest reply I’ve seen:
In the exposé-styled tweet, the user @RaptorsSlander outlined the fact that the account had only liked 5 tweets, a few Raptors tweets in 2021 and then some 76ers tweets this year, amongst many other dead giveaways including heaps of insider knowledge on both franchises.
Some of the most notable opinions from the account are as follows:
Gary Trent Jr. and Malachi Flynn ‘Unfixable’
On a Michael Grange article thread relating primarily to Gary Trent Jr. and Malachi Flynn, @Leonards1347 replied supposedly defining them as unfixable.
Now, GTJ struggled from the field last year at times. His inconsistency was a clear sign of frustration for not only Nurse, but all of us. Especially to start the season, in an article I wrote last year in early December, I outlined the clear problem undermining the Raptors incredible transition offence and defence.
Specifically, “When delving into the individual numbers, the immediate eye sore is the FG% of Fred VanVleet. Freddy is shooting a dreadful 35.7% from the field and 34% from deep. Tack on Gary Trent Jr. shooting 33.6% from behind the arc leaves Toronto with a reality that their two highest volume 3-point marksmen, who combine to average almost 15 3-point attempts per contest are only hitting about 1/3rd of the time. That’s devastating to an offence to say the least, it’s a borderline miracle the Raptors have managed to win 50% of their games with such incredible difficulty finding high-quality looks.”
Only had 3 Good Players
In a defensive reply, the account claimed that Nurse only had 3 good players on his team while playing against the 76ers in the playoffs a couple of years ago. Interesting considering that team had Fred VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby and Scottie Barnes.
Also supposedly implying that he did not appreciate Scottie Barnes as a player.
Upset About Being Fired
The account seemed to reference Masai firing Dwayne Casey after he had won coach of the year in defence of Nurse’s firing. By the looks of it in RaptorsSlander’s tweet, Nurse is upset with his dismissal and was quick to defend himself behind the safety of Leonards1347.
Harden’s Lazy, Wants to Trade him for Fred
This is an absolute gem. Supposedly Nurse’s burner expressed the interest in trading James Harden for Fred VanVleet. We all know Nick always loved Fred and has recently inherited the locker room problem that has been aging James Harden. Interesting to potentially get into his head on how he prefers to approach the situation.
The entire exposé written by RaptorsSlander/X is below, I encourage you to read it carefully and thoroughly in order to reasonably consider the factuality of the account being a Nick Nurse burner. The evidence is somewhat underwhelming as a result of the lack of screenshots surfacing thus far, yet the accuracy of the opinions and inside information along with the desperation in which the takes are supposedly presented are impossible to ignore.
(Photo via AP Photo/Eric Christian Smith)