COACH OF THE YEAR MAY GET FIRED, BUT IS IT ALL HIS FAULT?
Each member of Raptors organization must be scrutinized after implosion
There is nothing more confounding and maybe contradictory about the state of the Toronto Raptors than this: When Dwane Casey is named NBA coach of the year next month, and he is favoured, he may be the ex-coach of the Toronto Raptors.
That is what the story seems to be as the dust clears. The best season in Raptors history had just about the worst ending. Four bad games.
And all you remember is the end.
But could a coach have changed the Raptors’ fortunes against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the uneven sweep by the Cavs, or is making that kind of change simply the convenient answer, the easy ending, for a team and a performance that can’t easily be explained?
Could a coach have made DeMar DeRozan great, or Kyle Lowry dominant or Serge Ibaka emotionally involved or Jonas Valanciunas make a layup? More important than that, could a coach have hit one more shot of the many missed down the stretch in Game 1 that could have changed the playoff series completely rather than breathing life into LeBron James and the Cavaliers?
This isn’t a flip-the-switch kind of situation. Team president Masai Ujiri may well fire Casey. He’s thought about doing it before. He’s considered it under varying circumstances. What he needs to consider now, after a second-round smothering, after a dismal Game 4 defeat, isn’t just the coaching situation. It’s every situation. His roster. His stars. His salary structure. His young emerging players. The restricted free agent he must deal with. This is Ujiri’s team. And the team, so great in the regular season, failed in the post-season.
It failed again against the Cavaliers and LeBron. It’s one thing to run headfirst into the wind, which is what it’s like to play against King James, but that isn’t really what needs to be discussed and determined here.
You have to start with your own team. You have to ask hard questions. You have to break it down player by player — what happened to each of them? And why couldn’t they manage in the toughest of situations? Then you have to determine what your goal for next year happens to be. Is it to contend for the Eastern title?
Is it to take a step back and regroup?
Is it to start over?
Is it to first find out where James will play next year — and if that’s not the Eastern Conference and it’s not Cleveland — then how much does that change your thinking on your team?
Ujiri doesn’t tend to act quickly on matters such as this. He likes to take his time at the end of most seasons.
He likes to do his own autopsy and, just to make certain, do it again. Whether it be about his coach, the style of play, the approach to teaching or whether there is some kind of examination as to why his highest-paid players can’t perform at the highest levels when it matters most.
Ujiri has as much to answer for in the post-season as does Casey and his staff, as does virtually every player on the roster. This was a team defeat, from top to bottom.
And everything goes back to Game 1, after the Cavaliers barely survived against the Indiana Pacers. There was reason to think they would have a chance, not necessarily to beat the Cavs, but to give them one helluva ride.
Then came the fateful four minutes, 19 seconds to end the fourth quarter of Game 1. The series was just beginning but really it was ending.
With the Raptors up 102-99, after blowing an 11-point lead, DeRozan missed a shot, followed by Valanciunas missing four shots in a row, all of them from in close. Then Ibaka clanged on a three-point attempt and Lowry had a chance to all but clinch the game with 47 seconds left and wasn’t able to connect on a jumper. Then Fred VanVleet, sore shoulder and all, missed a wide open three, followed by a layup DeRozan couldn’t make and two layups C.J. Miles attempted and couldn’t finish on and then another Valanciunas miss from beneath the basket. Twelve straight misses to send the game to overtime. From the Raptors’ best scorers. From their go-to guys. And a Game 1 win turned into a loss that couldn’t be recovered from.
Now it’s a season-ending crisis. Four minutes and 19 seconds began the undoing of a wondrous 59-win season. It may well cost Casey, as fine a man as you will meet, his job. It may well cause roster upheaval. Once the Cavaliers had life, the Raptors had none.
In the final three games, James and Kevin Love, Cleveland’s top scorers, outscored Toronto’s two scorers, DeRozan and Lowry, by 87 points — or 29 points a game. How do you recover from that?
In Game 1, DeRozan and Lowry outscored James and Love by seven points.
Game 1 is where the series was lost.
The rest is hard to understand, hard to unravel, even harder to explain.
(Masai) Ujiri has as much to answer for in the post-season as does Casey and his staff, as does virtually every player on the roster.