Chicago has long held a special place in the heart of Raptors coach Nick Nurse.
The Windy City is about a seven-hour drive from his hometown of Carroll, Iowa, a nearly straight-shot east. His late father, Maury, was stationed at the city’s Navy Pier, now one of the top tourist destinations in the Midwestern United States, back when it was a training centre for the U.S. Navy toward the end of World War II. The elder Nurse went to school at the University of Illinois and one Nurse’s three sisters called Chicago home for the better part of two decades.