Dipping into trust fund pays off in the long run
The talk about the Toronto Raptors this magical season has always centred on a revamped offence, slight tweaks to a successful defensive philosophy, the emergence of the bench unit as one of the most dominant in the game in years, and the sudden and vital contributions from young players still learning their way.
That is all well and good, and it’s obviously been the predictable story behind the team’s rise to the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference for the first time ever, and a record-setting number of wins.
But there is one underlying factor that hasn’t often been discussed: Trust.
It’s president Masai Ujiri trusting coach Dwane Casey to make the necessary changes.
It’s Casey trusting his best and most important players to buy into a lesser role for a greater gain.
It’s those veterans trusting the young players to perform well beyond their years.
It’s trust up and down the organization — trust that change would wipe away the pain of the past.
“It’s been great, understanding that the biggest learning tool is failure,” all-star guard DeMar DeRozan said after the Raptors notched win No. 57 against the Indiana Pacers on Friday night.
“You’ve got to fail to understand what you need to be better at, how to be greater. We did that over the years. We had our ups and our downs. We had our moments of being upset and frustrated, but we learned from it and we didn’t let it break us.”
It has been that way since Casey arrived in 2011, charged with turning around the fortunes of a very middling team.
He trusted his ability to develop a program of consistent success and never got off point, coaching and coaxing with one thing in mind: turning Toronto into a perennially good team.
It’s worked beyond the expectations of many. In six of the last seven seasons, Toronto has in- creased its win total from the one before, something done only twice before in NBA history — by the Boston Celtics led by the legendary Red Auerbach in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and Phoenix under John MacLeod in the late 1970s.
“That’s what you want to be a part of,” DeRozan said.
“When you struggle you kind of find appreciation more in the grind. (It’s) not getting discouraged when things (are) not going your way, not winning. But you’ve got to remember those moments, to understand the 22-win season is what keeps you humble when you win 50-plus games multiple seasons.”
Even Casey confesses to rare moments when he wondered. “There was a time when we were almost trading players … You say ‘whoa, what is this going to be like?’ But the level of confidence, the level of work that our coaches and management and everybody’s put into building to where we are now, it’s a growth process,” the coach said.
“You can just see the improvement of players each and every year. In the days of instant everything, we want instant yesterday. We want to be a champion yesterday instead of growing and watching guys develop. That’s the bit of gratification we get as an organization and as a coaching staff, to watch our program grow. And the beautiful thing about it is, these young guys are going to be even better next year.”
It wasn’t easy at times, but the best things never are.
“It’s been a roller-coaster,” said DeRozan, the only Raptor to have gone every step of the journey with Casey.
“You have your great days and you have your bad days and it’s a grind like any other grind. You stay focused and understand you’re fighting for something bigger than yourself. Through the process, you realize you’ve accomplished some things bigger than you can imagine.”