CASE CLOSED
Ujiri and Casey had differences (see Game 3 vs. Cavs) — but breaking up was clearly hard to do for Raptors
He was announcing a firing. But at times on Friday, Masai Ujiri sounded as though he was delivering a eulogy.
Speaking about the road forward on the day he threw dirt on Dwane Casey’s run as the most successful coach in Raptors history, there were moments when the team president’s voice fluttered with tender emotion.
“A really difficult day for us in our organization … I think of this as in some way a celebration,” Ujiri said.
In some ways it was exactly like a funeral — a room full of people nodding at a voice-quaking tribute to a beloved figure. And the subject of all the kind words, though not in a casket, was most definitely not celebrating.
“Great man. Great coach,” Ujiri said. “It’s (like) starting again because we have lost somebody, somebody phenomenal.”
Not so phenomenal, mind you, that the Raptors aren’t currently in the market for somebody better in the wake of a playoff disappointment that reignited a recurring flashpoint in the Ujiri-Casey relationship. For all their fondness for each other, and for Casey’s undeniable success, Ujiri often seemed convinced his coach was leaving wins on the table with in-game adjustments that came too slow or not at all. It’s the eternal back and forth of pro sports. Talk to a coach and they moan about the roster. Talk to a GM and they nitpick the way the coach is using it.
One such heated back and forth came in the wake of Game 3 in Cleveland last week, after LeBron James’s coast-tocoast bank shot gave the Cavaliers the win at the buzzer. The fiery Ujiri, on the same night he stormed the court at halftime to confront officials, unleashed a loud verbal lashing on the occupants of the Raptors coaches’ office, demanding to know why the Raptors hadn’t double-teamed James. Casey and his assistants insisted they’d game-planned the double in the huddle, only to see the players blow the coverage on the court.
From management’s perspective, it was another adjustment gone unmade.
Another game plan rendered moot.
From a coach’s perspective, it was an illustration of the roster’s limitations, not to mention LeBron’s greatness.
It’s happened to some good ones. It certainly wasn’t lost on anybody that one of the first names to surface as Casey’s possible replacement, Mike Budenholzer, shares an ignominious distinction in common with Casey. Budenholzer, too, was swept by LeBron’s Cavaliers in back-to-back seasons en route to getting fired, in his case from Atlanta. Budenholzer is 0-8 in the playoffs as a head coach facing LeBron. It makes Casey’s 2-12 mark with Toronto look respectable.
Budenholzer and Casey are hardly the only NBA coaches who’ve fallen victim to James’s peerlessness. Tom Thibodeau was ousted from Chicago after the Bulls lost to the Cavaliers in the second round in 2015, this after watching a 2-1 series lead turn into a six-game defeat. Jason Kidd bit the dust on Brooklyn’s bench after an unfortunate run-in. Frank Vogel has said he would have won an NBA championship in Indiana if not for James’s presence. The list goes on. That’s what James does: He exposes cracks in strategies and lineups. He pushes organi- zations to point fingers and lay blame. Never mind that the piled-up evidence suggests it’s James’s talent that’s at the root of most of what’s occurred in the Eastern Conference since his arrival.
As Casey deadpanned on Wednesday, when he was asked if he’d been outcoached in the Cavaliers series: “(No.) 23 had something to do with that.”
Casey’s firing, in some ways, had as much to do with LeBron as the passage of time. That Ujiri and Casey lasted five years together, given that Casey was hired by Ujiri’s predecessor seven years ago, means the tandem, like the majority of Raptors seasons of recent vintage, worked out better than anyone reasonably expected. It’s amazing Ujiri didn’t want to hire his own guy sooner.
“Sometimes these things come to an end, our relationships come to an end and we’ll figure out a way to move on, a new voice, and just new everything, in terms of that position,” Ujiri said.
And as much as Casey scoffed at the idea that a new voice might make a difference here — this while speaking at an awkward Wednesday press conference with his job status still twisting in limbo — it makes some sense Ujiri would want to explore how much better his team could be with a different pair of hands at the controls. It’s another eternal truth of pro sports: Changing the coach is easier than changing the players. And drastically improving Toronto’s roster is far heavier lifting.
“To be honest, roster changes are a little bit more difficult and complicated, but we’ll continue to grow this team … as much as we can,” Ujiri said. “We’re not saying that this roster is perfect. There are things we have to do … Roster changes, it’s not something that I can change today — sometimes it takes two months, sometimes it takes one year, sometimes it takes two years.”
Two years — that’s how long it’ll be until we see the expiration of the contract belonging to Kyle Lowry, who has too often been a no-show to big playoff games. Two years — that’s what’s left on the deals belonging to the fading Serge Ibaka and the marginalized Jonas Valanciunas. Barring some miraculous work on the trade market, until then the chief road to improvement will have to be internal.
Ujiri knows all this. Even before he laid Casey to rest on Friday, he was anticipating the inevitable shift in the club’s narrative.
“Now it’s my job. It’s on me,” Ujiri said Wednesday. “Put it on me.”
With much of the roster’s limitations seemingly well established, with a revered coach fired just to be sure — for the first time since Ujiri arrived here in 2013, there’s suddenly nobody else to put it on.