From the book We the North: 25 Years of the Toronto Raptors, by Doug Smith. Copyright © 2020 by Bryan Hoch. Published by Viking Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. All rights reserved.
Long before Nick Nurse was a Coach of the Year and had his assistants plucked by other teams, and long before Dwane Casey helped stabilize the franchise by building a cultural foundation, the Toronto Raptors’ head coach position was a morbid carousel of short stints. Over the franchise’s first 16 seasons, seven different men held the title, not a single one of whom posted an overall winning record.
In his new book detailing the 25-year history of the franchise, Toronto Star reporter Doug Smith sets aside a chapter to honour the early years (or decades) of characters at the helm of the team.
After Wilkens, things got even weirder. The Raptors hired Kevin O’Neill. We still have no idea why he was the choice, but the story goes O’Neill was highly recommended by a bunch of guys around the league.
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O’Neill was a hard-working guy but also very controlling. He made every play call, and because of his old-school approach, he wanted to win games with scores in the 70s and 80s. He went against the direction of the modern game and wanted his team to grind out victories. You could see it in his personality. He was a “crash and burn” guy right from the start.
He lasted only one season in Toronto. The team went 33–49, but he left behind some memorable moments. One night in San Francisco, the Raptors had won in overtime against Golden State and pushed their record to 25–25. It appeared they had a chance to make the playoffs, but Jalen Rose broke his hand that night and all hope went out the window. Frustrated, O’Neill broke a lamp in his hotel room.
A month later, The Globe and Mail broke the story, in a piece that also talked about his lifestyle and how he loved having a few drinks too many on a lot of nights. We woke up the next day to go to a shootaround in New York, and you can imagine the number of media members circling the scene at Madison Square Garden. To his credit, O’Neill answered every question and took all responsibility. He looked at a group of reporters, including me at one point, and said, “Look, I’ve only been drunk on the road one time this season and that was with you, Doug.” He was referring to the night before a game in Seattle when we hung out and had a few too many drinks at the Metropolitan. I felt like three inches tall when he said that, but he was right. There were a lot of beers involved that evening.
O’Neill was a train wreck waiting to happen. After the Raptors played their final game of the season in Milwaukee, we were all scheduled to fly home. O’Neill asked me what time my flight was. I told him I would land around eleven in the morning back in Toronto. “You’re going to want to move that up,” he said. “My press conference is something you want to be at.”
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He wasn’t wrong. At his end-of-season presser, O’Neill blasted the organization and questioned their commitment to winning. Later that day, he was fired. And you want to know how crazy O’Neill could be? That night, long after we’d all filed our stories, we were in the old Harbour Sports Grille, a drinking establishment right by the arena that was the local for all the beat writers. We were in the bar and assistant Jay Triano—who O’Neill always thought was some kind of front-office plant even though that was the furthest thing from the truth—was in the dining room with his family, wife and three kids. Then O’Neill, along with a couple of his other staff members who’d obviously been out for a few to mark the end of his tenure, tried to get into the place to get at Triano, and only the forceful words of the joint’s owner stopped a really ugly incident from happening.
The coaching carousel continued, and in came Sam Mitchell, who, surprise, was the exact opposite of the previous coach. Unlike O’Neill, Mitchell was personable and would spend hours chatting with us, not just about the game of basketball, but about politics, the economy, and anything else that came up. He loved to talk and he loved to tell stories.
Mitchell was a worldly guy. We were in Oklahoma City one time when he grabbed a bunch of reporters and got us all to go with him to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. I remember seeing Sam almost in tears just talking about the tragedy of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and how that wasn’t the America he loved. It was a very poignant moment that gave us a glimpse into the person Mitchell was.
I think Bryan Colangelo fired Mitchell too quickly. The team was coming off back-to-back playoff appearances but started the 2010–11 season 8–9. After a blowout loss in Denver, Mitchell was let go. I’ve always felt it was an overreaction to a poor start. I would have liked to see Mitchell coach a little bit more of that team. He wasn’t a bad coach at all. But the organization felt like they needed a new voice.
Mitchell’s replacement was Jay Triano, who many saw as a token Canadian hire. Triano had been around the game a long time, and I think Colangelo wanted someone who would listen to his input without much pushback. Mitchell had done it reluctantly.
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It was a no-win situation for Triano. He inherited the team at a time when the roster was going in the wrong direction. It wasn’t until the Raptors hired Dwane Casey in 2011 that the team finally found stability at the head coaching position.
Even though they all had their flaws, I’ll never forget the head coaches who came before that.
It’s funny how relationships develop. As a guy who came to the beat with a few years in the business—I was 35 when the inaugural season rolled around—it was easier to develop relationships with coaches who were of the same vintage or close to it than with players who were much younger and focused on different things.
Maybe because of that, I tended to give coaches a break. One of the true tenets of writing about any team is that a coach often gets too much blame when things go south and too much credit when things are good. If there is one thing I learned early, it’s that the NBA is a players league and that talent wins; the X and O skills of any one coach can only do so much.
(Top photo: Harry How / Getty Images)
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