Columnist image

TSN Raptors Reporter

| Archive

TORONTO – There’s a misconception out there that anything less than beating LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers would have been a failure for the Toronto Raptors.

That was never the case, at least not for those at the top of the organization. It was their goal, of course, but not necessarily the expectation.

Raptors president Masai Ujiri and his front office staff are paid to be realistic, and the reality was they were heading into a series against one of the greatest players of all-time, hoping to do something that no Eastern Conference team had done successfully in seven years and counting: send James home before the NBA Finals.

Even with his weakened supporting cast, it was always going to be a tall order, but it’s something they spent the previous 12 months preparing for and knew that they would ultimately be judged on.

Their expectation was to compete, to push James as the Indiana Pacers did a round earlier, and to show marked improvement from the previous spring, when they were embarrassed by the Cavs in four-game sweep.

You can bet that nobody in the organization expected to get swept again. After putting together the best regular season in franchise history, the 2017-18 Raptors failed, not because they lost but because of how they lost – showing little-to-no fight in two of the four games against Cleveland.

So, here we are. The off-season has officially begun and it’s back to the drawing board.

“I can’t pull the ‘culture reset’ off this year, can I?,” Ujiri joked as he opened his annual end-of-season press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

Each of the team’s key figures – players and coaches – made it out of last summer’s evaluation period unscathed, as Ujiri opted to tinker with their style of play, rather than the personnel itself. It’s hard to see that happening again.

Ujiri spoke for over 25 minutes, saying an awful lot without saying much of anything at all, as usual. He’s always lamented the idea of having to sit up there with the wounds still fresh and answer questions about decisions he hasn’t made yet. If there was anything to take away from his press conference it was that: some hard decisions have to be made, changes – at least to some degree – are probably coming, and (also as usual) none of it will be rushed.

His first order of business, whenever he’s ready to get to it, will be determining the future of his head coach, Dwane Casey.

On Tuesday, TSN reported that the Raptors were strongly leaning towards making a coaching change. That remains the case, according to sources, but there are a number of moving pieces, which could delay a decision until later this month.

Ujiri, who conducted his presser moments after Casey’s, spoke fondly of the coach and the job he’s done over the last seven seasons, calling him “unbelievable.” But, when pressed to guarantee Casey’s job for next season, Ujiri gave us this:

“I’ve said what I’ve had to say about that. I told you we’re evaluating everything and that’s how we’re going to leave it.”

Hardly a ringing endorsement. The two met for a couple hours on Wednesday morning, but Casey said he hasn’t been given any assurances.

“Nobody’s told me any differently and until they do, I'm still here, still fighting, still scratching, still meeting with players, and that's all I can do,” Casey said. “They haven't changed my key lock. Door still opens. I had some meetings with Masai talking about what we can do better, what we can do better next year to get over the hump. Until that changes, I'm still here.”

Casey is at the centre of a uniquely awkward situation and, true to character, he’s handling it with class. He’s coming off a remarkable regular season, his best ever and one that’s made him a deserving NBA Coach of the Year candidate, but here is, essentially interviewing for his own job.

The 61-year-old basketball lifer is under contract in Toronto for one more season but, truth is, that offers him very little security going into another uncertain off-season. He’s very much on the heat seat, but it’s not like this is uncharted waters for him. He has spent most of his seven-year Raptors tenure on the hot seat. Bryan Colangelo nearly fired him during an ugly West Coast road trip in December of 2012 before ownership intervened. Many speculated he would be replaced when Ujiri took over in 2013. He was almost let go after the first-round sweep to Washington in 2015 and could have been a ‘culture reset’ casualty last summer.

Ujiri was fiery on Wednesday, almost to the point of being defensive, but his embattled head coach calmly made his case. He reminded us of the progress the team’s young supporting cast has made under his watch. He preached continuity and wisely pointed to the success the Spurs have had without bringing in a ‘new voice’. He talked about what they have to do to translate regular season wins to the playoffs. All the while, he continued to refer to the Raptors as ‘we.’ If his team had this much fight in them he wouldn’t be in this predicament to begin with.

There is an argument to be made for sticking with Casey. There’s also an argument to be made for letting him go. Neither decision will be universally well received.

Despite all their regular-season success, the bar has been raised. The 59 wins, the first-place finish – how much does any of it mean without the requisite postseason success to legitimize it? Can you really just shrug and say ‘oh well, that’s what happens when you run into LeBron?’ if you’re not even willing or able to take your best shot at him?

In a ‘I hate making excuses, but here’s an excuse’ moment, Ujiri criticized the officials for failing to call, or even review, Kevin Love’s elbow on DeMar DeRozan – later ruled a flagrant one by the NBA – late in Game 1. Maybe the series turns out differently if that call went their way, he inferred.

That’s a reach. The Raptors probably deserved to lose that game after missing the last 11 shots they took in the fourth quarter, many of them layups and wide-open threes. Then, after losing the opener in disappointing fashion, they got run off the floor in Game 2. The same could be said for the blowout loss in Monday elimination game, coming off of LeBron’s deflating buzzer beater a couple nights earlier. Does that sound like a team with enough mental fortitude to pull out a series like that, even if another break or two went their way?

Casey deserves some of the blame, certainly not all of it, but some. It’s a shame that he could end up being the fall guy, the “easy target” as he put it, while the high-priced players that are just as responsible for the way this season ended (if not more responsible) may prove tougher to move on from on account of their contracts.

However, if there are two things Casey understands as well as anybody it’s that: this business is rarely fair, and at the end of the day all that matters are results.

“It’s part of the business,” he said. “I take it. I’m a big boy. I've been through it. I know where we started here, I know what we've accomplished, I know the basketball world and how they feel about us and respect us and what we’re doing, so it's part of the territory. I take it. I accept it. I'm not running from it.”

The Raptors have no intention of blowing it up, which Ujiri confirmed on Wednesday. It wouldn’t be easy to hit the reset button even if that’s what they wanted to do, given the financial commitments they’ve made to DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka over the next two seasons.

Most long-time Raps fans would agree it’s better to watch a perennial 50-plus-win team – even one with a ceiling – than endure year after year of losing, especially with today’s NBA landscape being what it is. Tanking is a massive risk without any guaranteed payout. There’s no telling how long you have to be bad for before you start to turn the corner, and the odds of building a team good enough to compete with the Warriors (or even as good as these current Raptors) from scratch are slim.

Still, bringing back the same team that just flamed out, again, would be a tough sell. Casey may be the first domino to fall, but he can’t be the last, not if Ujiri is serious about fixing this team. They’re good, let’s not lose sight of that, but they’re flawed. They won’t rebuild, but if the expectation is to change their fate they’ll have to retool. It’s on Ujiri to figure out how.

“We have to sit back and go see exactly what we have to do,” he said. “But it’s not doomsday. Where our program is, it’s not doomsday. If people are talking about us that means some way, somehow we're relevant now in the NBA. And when you get relevant, now you have to meet the challenges every day, the expectations of growing and getting bigger and winning. And that’s what we’re going to try and do. Whatever we have to do to get there, I’m going to, collectively we're going to, evaluate.”