Sometimes, when you are really confident at your job, the best thing to do is admit you don’t know what you’re doing. Sometimes the only path to take and remain credible is to stand up in front of a crowd, turn your palms up and say, “I’m not sure what the right move is.”
Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri has proven to be very good at his job and he’s never lacked for confidence, so it couldn’t have been a surprise that he turned his end-of-the-year or – more accurately — start-of-next-season press conference into 45 minutes of ‘I really don’t know.’
And Raptors fans should take comfort in that. Because while almost every off-season ushers in questions with no certain answers, few of them have as many big questions with such wildly divergent potential responses than the one that started ticking earnestly moments after Toronto was unceremoniously swept aside by the Cleveland Cavaliers on Sunday.
So Ujiri acknowledged that trying to make sense of it all, now, in the moments after a disappointing end to a promising season and nearly two months before free agency tips off on July 1, doesn’t make a load of sense, and he didn’t pretend otherwise.
“If I came in here and said we are going to decide we are going to do this and this and this, I think I would be a bad leader, right, after one day after you lose,” said Ujiri. “Is there any decision I can make right now that is the right decision today? To me I feel like talking now is BS basically. It’s absolute BS why we need to do this today. You might as well talk to me in like a month.”
So there was no clarity on what his plans were for his four free agents other than he would like to bring Kyle Lowry back, providing Lowry wants to return. Translation: Lowry won’t be getting a five-year, max-contract offer to stay a Raptor, but if he wants to negotiate, we’ll be at the table with a fair offer for a 31-year-old all-star point guard who has struggled in the post-season.
But Ujiri went on to make at least two things very clear in his remarks:
1. He wants his team to play differently.
2. He’s trusting Dwane Casey to make it so.
So, no matter what happens a month from now or the month after that, the dye on next season is cast: Things will be the same, but different.
And this is where Ujiri’s risk tolerance will be tested, because as vague as the solutions to the Raptors’ LeBron James-sized problems might be, he’s already stated that he’s willing to take an unconventional route to solving them.
In one breath – actually many – Ujiri was about as explicit as someone in his position can be that the Raptors must change the way they play basketball, and maybe even how they carry themselves, to improve. Whether Lowry is back or not or DeMar DeRozan is back or not, if Ujiri has his way, the Raptors will be a more egalitarian offence next year, with a greater emphasis on three-point shooting.
Something must give. Over the last three playoffs the Raptors have scored on average 10 points worse per 100 possessions than during the regular season. Over the last four playoffs their cumulative record is 17-24. In seven series – five as the higher seed – they’ve lost Game 1 all seven times. Each of Lowry and DeRozan has seen their regular-season production plummet as defences gear up to stop their attack. The Raptors have finished last, second-last and last in potential assists the past three years and 21st the year before that, not enough to make opponents pay for doubling the Raptors stars.
“We’ve done what we’ve done so many times and it hasn’t worked,” said Ujiri. “That’s the simple answer. We can only try that so much, and it just hasn’t worked. It’s easy to defend in my opinion when you play 1-on-1, it’s predictable …. I’m the one who said let’s do it [again] .. how does it work this year?
“But now it’s time to address and see if we can move the ball more and figure out a way to pass the ball more to get better options. And use the players that we have. I don’t think this is matter of changing players or anything like that. How do we change a little bit of how we play and how we approach the game?”
No one is arguing with the thinking, but the method?
Ujiri used the words “reset” and “culture change” and said the way his team, coached by Dwane Casey, has played the last four years, isn’t good enough.
Nine times out of 10 that’s the language that either explains why a coach was fired or a new coach was hired.
If you didn’t listen carefully it would have been easy to get the impression that Casey was being removed with the bathwater, but Ujiri confirmed that Casey will have the chance to redesign the style of play the Raptors have made their own under his watch.
“Yes there is commitment [to Casey],” Ujiri said. “But we are all going to question ourselves. We are all going to seriously question ourselves now, and figure out the best way to do it. Because coach Casey has been a phenomenal part of our success here, you know, and in some ways we owe that to him [the opportunity to continue].
“But I’ve told him that we all have to be accountable. I haven’t slept, and I know he hasn’t slept too, because we’re thinking of ways that we can continue to make these things better, and make the right decisions.”
If this sounds like giving the contractor who forgot to waterproof your basement the job to fix it, let’s just say it’s not the standard way of doing business in the NBA, where coaches are often fired for lesser sins than failing to win playoff series.
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And by giving Casey his marching orders so plainly and publicly he’s not only putting Casey in a tight spot – watch his team’s assist totals and three-point attempts become a game-by-game gauge of his progress next year – but Ujiri has put his own judgement on the line too.
Should Casey falter in implementing his new plan or should Lowry or DeRozan or whoever chafe when it comes to implementing it, the easiest argument to make will be if Ujiri wanted his team to play a different way and reset the culture he should have hired a different coach.
That he expects to get different results from the same faces speaks to a high level or confidence or a high tolerance for risk, or maybe both.
But while Ujiri spoke in May about not yet having the answers for the season just finished, that he was already prepared to commit to Casey as an agent for change means he could be facing more questions if the new-look/old-look Raptors struggle next season in November, December or any month other than June.
