Raptors' prolonged coaching search perplexing for those outside team

TORONTO — It almost goes without saying the Toronto Raptors executive team deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Teams that have been in the draft lottery two of the past three seasons and were fairly easy first-round outs in the other year don’t always get that consideration. But given that from 2013-14 to 2021-22 the club went to the playoffs eight times, made the conference finals twice and won a championship in 2019, the Raptors do. That they did it while finding elite talent in unexpected places, making savvy decisions on coaches, and pulling off franchise-defining trades can’t be overlooked either.

And not all of those moves were popular at the time or were the obvious choice. Zigging while others expected a Zag has been a point of pride for the current front office. Firing Dwane Casey in the summer of 2018 when he won coach-of-the-year and led the Raptors to a 59-win season was hardly a no-brainer. Similarly, not firing Casey in 2015 after the Raptors no-showed and were swept by the Washington Wizards in the first round was a choice not everyone agreed with.

Trading DeMar DeRozan after he was named second-team all-NBA? Risky. It paid off.

Hiring a relatively unknown, unproven assistant coach from Casey’s bench, Nick Nurse, was an eye-brow raiser.

It worked out well.

Even drafting Scottie Barnes with the No. 4 pick in the 2021 draft was mildly controversial, with most experts pegging Jalen Suggs — who went fifth overall to Orlando. Barnes won rookie-of-the-year honours.

That’s what a long-term track record of success does or should do: It provides the benefit of the doubt and leeway for doing things their own way and on their own schedule.

But even in that context, the Raptors' prolonged coaching search — the Raptors cashiered Nurse nearly two months ago now — has some folks around the NBA perplexed.

“It’s bizarre,” said one league insider. “It’s hard to know what they’re waiting for; they’re not competing against anyone at this point.”

Said another: “I keep getting questions like, 'what the hell is going on in Toronto?'"

See? People who make their living in the NBA are just like you and me.

But again, just because people outside looking in don’t have a firm grasp on where the Raptors are heading or what they’re planning — and in this, there are echoes of the leadup to the trade deadline where it seemed like the entire league was waiting for Toronto to do something, but no one knew what — is hardly a bad thing.

Raptors president Masai Ujiri, general manager Bobby Webster and the rest of their longstanding leadership group have zero obligation to share their plans with anyone.

“We’re still gathering information,” is their mantra, and “sometime before the [June 22] draft” is their timeline.

Multiple league insiders have been left with the impression that the Raptors are looking to hire a bright, young first-time head coach to lead them into the future, but the name most consistently connected to the club is 62-year-old Sergio Scariolo, the former Raptors assistant and hugely accomplished Spanish men’s national team boss who would be an NBA rookie at an age when retirement often beckons. Another name connected to the position, Golden State Warriors assistant Kenny Atkinson, is 56.

You just hope Toronto has a clear plan, since in the meantime five other organizations have combed through the relatively finite pool of coaching candidates and hired someone who — it’s safe to infer — they believe is better for the job than whoever the Raptors end up with.

It’s interesting to note two teams that have very, very high expectations and short timelines believed former Raptors coaches were the best people for the job, with Nurse getting the nod in Philadelphia and the Milwaukee Bucks hiring former Raptors assistant Adrian Griffin after an extensive search that involved up to 20 candidates, 15 primary interviewees and six finalists.

That the Raptors fired Nurse and passed over Griffin — who they interviewed — suggests they have a better option in mind and not just that they’ve been beaten to the punch by more proactive teams. And teams have been proactive: The Houston Rockets wasted no time in hiring former Celtics head coach Ime Udoka, who was linked to the Raptors early on in the process.

Similarly, you have the Detroit Pistons, heading into the fifth year of an extensive rebuild, breaking the bank and hiring former Phoenix Suns head coach Monty Williams with a benchmark six-year, $78 million contract to lead them out of the wilderness. And the Suns who — given the age of Kevin Durant and the resources they gave up acquiring him — need to win a title yesterday and hired 2020 NBA champion Frank Vogel to help them win now.

All of that said, the explanation for why the coaching search has gone on this long may be hiding in plain sight. If, for example, Scariolo is their primary target, it just may be a matter of waiting until his Virtus Bologna club finishes playing in the Serie A Finals, which begin Saturday.

There is certainly mutual interest: Ujiri and Webster flew to Italy to meet with him back in May — with permission from Virtus, who have Scariolo under contract for another year — and reports in the Italian media suggest that the Raptors job is definitely something Scariolo is considering, but not something he wants to discuss while his team is trying to win a title.

So it could be as simple as that: Scariolo is their preferred candidate, and the perceived 'delay' is a matter of logistics.

With the rest of the coaching positions filled you could make the argument that the Raptors are in a good position. The other candidates that reports have suggested remain on the Raptors' radar — Memphis Grizzlies assistant Darko Rajakovic is another rumoured finalist, along with Atkinson — don’t have any other options but to wait things out if they want to be a head coach next season.

But slow playing the process does have costs. The Raptors only have two coaches under contract in Jim Sann and Rico Hines, and there is a growing expectation that Hines — who the Raptors hired last season to re-energize their player development program — is a strong candidate to join Nurse’s staff in Philadelphia.

Whoever does get the job will have their hands full building out a staff of assistants and player development people in relatively short order. It’s not an impossible task — finding quality people who want to work in the NBA isn’t that hard, and any worthy head coaching candidate should have the bones of a staff on a group chat — but identifying, vetting and interviewing six-to-10 player-facing employees takes time and energy at a point of the calendar when the draft, free agency and filling out the roster is usually front-and-centre. There’s a knock-on effect too, with the Raptors 905 staffing picture in limbo as well. That’s not the biggest issue Toronto is facing but considering the pipeline of useful talent from the G-League/two-way contract pool has hit a dry spell in recent seasons, it can’t be ignored.

And we haven’t mentioned that looming is an absolutely pivotal off-season, with Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby heading into the last years of their contracts and Fred VanVleet, Jakob Poeltl, and Gary Trent Jr. heading into free agency. That’s five of the Raptors' top-six players at or approaching career crossroads.

What else? The Raptors need to either nail their draft pick — No. 13 — nail a trade, or find some diamonds in the player development pile to round out their roster after a disappointing 41-win season.

The TLDR version: The Raptors front office has a lot on their shared plate at the moment, with the head coaching position the first domino. Hopefully they’ve got a strategy mapped out and are executing it on their own timeline. From the outside looking in, though, it’s just a little hard to guess what that might be at the moment.